How large should a linux partition be?

[Issa Aboudi]

I want to dual boot my gaming PC with Ubuntu. I have 2 terabytes of storage with most of it free and I'm not quite sure how much would be enough for dual booting. I don't imagine I'll need more than 10 gigabytes of space for Linux but I want to double check if that is a reasonable expectation. I'm planning to use linux for programming/coding and windows for most other things like watching videos, playing games etc due to lack of compatibility with applications and most games I play.

Thank you

[RONOTHAN##]

7 minutes ago, Matthew Aboudi said:

I want to dual boot my gaming PC with Ubuntu. I have 2 terabytes of storage with most of it free and I'm not quite sure how much would be enough for dual booting. I don't imagine I'll need more than 10 gigabytes of space for Linux but I want to double check if that is a reasonable expectation. I'm planning to use linux for programming/coding and windows for most other things like watching videos, playing games etc due to lack of compatibility with applications and most games I play.

Thank you

Most Linux distros want 20GB of storage, and since you've got 2TB, might as well give it at least 40GB just to make sure it's got enough space. 

[Eigenvektor]

You can probably get by with 10 GB, but depends on how much software you're going to install besides the OS itself. I'd be a bit more generous, or you'll just shoot yourself in the foot longterm.

[Guest]

10GB may not meet the requirements for most Distro Installers, which I believe is around 20GB.

10GB itself would probably be fine for the Root Partition, but you should take into account your Home Directory where you will be storing your projects and User Data. In a Programming environment, I personally wouldn't allocate any less than 64GB and would probably aim for 120GB+, but I guess that would come down to the quantity and size of your projects. One thing to keep in mind as well, some Distro's will also allocate Swap Space up to your RAM Size.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Nayr438
Cleaned up

[Alex Atkin UK]

I have 48GB in my /home partition alone but it is my daily driver PC.  If you use it a lot, it can soon catch up with you.  So I'd definitely agree that 120GB across all partitions is a good idea if you plan to use it regularly rather than just the odd occasion.

[Issa Aboudi]

22 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Most Linux distros want 20GB of storage, and since you've got 2TB, might as well give it at least 40GB just to make sure it's got enough space. 

 

19 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

You can probably get by with 10 GB, but depends on how much software you're going to install besides the OS itself. I'd be a bit more generous, or you'll just shoot yourself in the foot longterm.

 

19 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

10GB may not meet the requirements for most Distro Installers, which I believe is around 20GB.

10GB itself would probably be fine for the Root Partition, but you should take into account your Home Directory where you will be storing your projects and User Data. In a Programming environment, I personally wouldn't allocate any less than 64GB and would probably aim for 120GB+, but I guess that would come down to the quantity and size of your projects. One thing to keep in mind as well, some Distro's will also allocate Swap Space up to your RAM Size.

I see thank you very much everyone! I'll give myself 100 GB of space in that case. Can i reallocate this later on or is this only set one time?

[RONOTHAN##]

2 minutes ago, Matthew Aboudi said:

 

 

I see thank you very much everyone! I'll give myself 100 GB of space in that case. Can i reallocate this later on or is this only set one time?

IIRC you can repartition the drive without losing data, but it's a hassle and you're much better off making sure you gave it enough to begin with. 

[BobVonBob]

In my personal experience, if you only have a single drive in your computer run a VM or use WSL instead. In 6 attempts across multiple distros and multiple computers I have never had a successful single drive dual boot setup, and I wouldn't recommend it to others. Multi-drive setups with one OS per drive have worked fine, but have usually required repairing the Windows bootloader, so be aware of that.

[lacek]

2 hours ago, Matthew Aboudi said:

I want to dual boot my gaming PC with Ubuntu. I have 2 terabytes of storage with most of it free and I'm not quite sure how much would be enough for dual booting. I don't imagine I'll need more than 10 gigabytes of space for Linux but I want to double check if that is a reasonable expectation. I'm planning to use linux for programming/coding and windows for most other things like watching videos, playing games etc due to lack of compatibility with applications and most games I play.

Thank you

It really depends on the software. My root partition takes around 150 GB. This is because:

- debug symbols that are needed for reporting bugs take space (a few GBs for Libre office)

- flatpaks take lots of space 

- I have some software that is simply large in itself

- you need several GBs to compile a kernel

 

If you have mostly free 2TB disk, with the above use case, just give yourself at least 200 GB. Having /home on same partition as "/" is not really that bad idea for single user machines. Saves space. Requires remembering not ot wipe /home together with / when doing reinstall, but how often does one really reinstall linux? I never did. I followed Ubuntu from 14.10 to 21.10 without need for reinstall.

 

1 hour ago, BobVonBob said:

In my personal experience, if you only have a single drive in your computer run a VM or use WSL instead. In 6 attempts across multiple distros and multiple computers I have never had a successful single drive dual boot setup, and I wouldn't recommend it to others. Multi-drive setups with one OS per drive have worked fine, but have usually required repairing the Windows bootloader, so be aware of that.

I agree with VM or WSL suggestion.  Dual boot machines are typically a pain in the ass as the thing you need is always on the other OS.

 

I strongly disagree with "dual boot setup" problems. I have it on a test machine and there are no issues with it, and it has just a single drive. Surely some bootloader will likely need to be repaired, but it is Linux's bootloader as Windows happily overwrites it (I use UEFI). Even if it needs repairing then so what? Once you repair it, you are set up.