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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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is there any drawback to having too many partitions? (linux.community)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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experimenting with my 2014 macbook pro and several linux distros (xubuntu, mint, fedora)

So far I have 8 partitions:

1 EFI for grub,
1 hfs+ (Linux HFS+ ESP) for OCLP, I think,
1 apfs for the macOS 14 I cannot boot,
2 ext4 for xubuntu and mint
1 brfs for fedora (so it cannot be ext4?)
2 unallocated ones, because I deleted systems I don't want.

I use gparted: the 2 unallocated sections are separated. Is this a problem?

How many partitions are too many for this machine? 247 GiB storage and 7.66 GiB memory.

After I'm done experimenting and keep the 2 to 3 operative systems I like, should I wipe the notebook, create the 2 to 3 partitions I'm going to need and reinstall? Or would it be better to simply delete the partitions I don't want?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Waste of space due to fragmentation is the first thing that comes to mind. I got tired of moving and symlinking stuff to make room inside partitions. Nowadays I only use the essentials (/ and /efi) + /home + 1 partition per physical device, with a filesystem that makes sense for the usage and device. That said, I never run more than one distro on bare metal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Sameish, for Linux I have the same, efi, root and a seperate home. Then I have windows efi and windows itself on another drive. Then I also have another drive for most of my storage, which is shared between Linux and Windows. I only really use my home partition for downloads and configs, maybe I should move my downloads to the storage drive so I can share them with windows as well. Not sure why I've never done that