Well, at least not the ext4 parts. I managed to get a 500 Mb fat32 (or exFat, icr) at the beginning of the disk (it's a 500GB SSD) becasue I read that win is unable to recognize any disk without the first partition being some kind of FAT / uefi / mbr... i dunno, I just figured better to have and not need than need and have not, you know. Moving on: first partition check, but after that I botched it and left everything in root, + a 1.3 MB unallocated space at the end.

My question is, I've done very little to the disk so far: chrome, a few back ups , wine, nothing heavy yet (in my uninformed, here asking questions, opinion-based-on-vapor, that is). So can I safely boot to a live USB, and then shrink the root partition from 499GB down to ~100GB or 105GB to 110GB approx, and then hop back into the sys disk and partition for /home and /backups or /ramlog or whatever (idk, I'm still learning the names, but I saw them listed, some common ones, and it seems smart)

So, sound plan? Safe or no safu?

It would be very easy to screw up and destroy everything if you make a mistake. I recommend that you back everything up to external storage. Then rearrange your Linux partitions and format them. Then restore everything to its new location and run grub.

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Okay, so this is what I've been trying to get a handle on this morning: you can make a fully portable install on a USB (I think 32GB should do it?). (1) But how? Or is this just the same thing as a live USB? (2) Does this involve the USB image writer? And making something new/ different? or (3) Am I planning to use my same Cinnamon mint 21.1 bootable USB from a couple days ago, and my other / spare 32GB USB I will use with timeshift to backup my system, (4) then I partition, srry, boot to live USB, then partition when sys disk is not mounted, partition, probably / possibly break it, then proceed with a clean install, and finally restore system state from backup with timeshift.

?? If yes, this is correct, how can I do the install with everything going to the correct partitions? Because I clearly didn't get it right last time. And I was only aiming for (1) uefi exFAT partition, (2) 100GB root, and (3) 400GB /home partition. I wasn't even trying to mess with the 20 different unified paths thing they had going on in the chooser.

Thanks for the help, btw

You can shrink your root partition and create a home partition but it might be simpler to reinstall everything at this point.

You can do everything from the installer by choosing "Something Else" at the Installation Type menu. Basically just like any partitioning tool but you select the mount point i.e. /, /home, swap etc and the filesystem type, FAT32 for efi and ext4 for everything else but swap.

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Okay, yeah. I was thinking a clean install wouldn't hurt, for the practice. Plus now I'm not scared to mess up my win 10 OS, with any/ all need for that removed from the situation, now that I'm native ext4 and stylin' , and now I know what the hell "/" means... maybe... so "/" is going to be my mount point, correct, and unlike last time, I've got to individually select each one of the partitions that I want included? right?

[forgot to say: appreciate any words regarding swap and mem dump: (1) I plan to minimize swappiness again this time, by setting the parameters to use 90% of RAM before swap, and set swappiness to 15, I think it was... don't quote me, but does that affect 'swap'? and (2) With 64GB RAM do I really need/ want to set aside 65GB out of 500GB for a dedicated mem dump? Thanks again.]

And just to be fairly, simplistic about things, for my sake (cuz, I must admit, to the uninitiated, first time around - unified file structure is foreign and hard to decipher) I should go for: /, home, backup (I'll keep a redundant one somewhere else), anything else? maybe like a partition dedicated for a sandbox/VM ? I'm all ears.

The directory where each filesystem/partition is "attached" is the mount point i.e /, /home etc.
I would keep thinks simple i.e uefi, /, /home and /backups (or whatever you want to call it). swap isn't mounted like a regular filesystem.

I am not sure what you mean my mem dump? Yes you want a swap partition and 4 GB should be enough. I would not change swappiness.

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I meant a dedicated space for a RAM log (maybe?) A place where the volatile memory is dumped, or turned into a .dmp file. Usually included as part of a crash report, or else I guess you hunt them down somewhere in the bowels of window\system etc... I've never really customized a system to this extent, but I'm wondering if it's really practical or not to dedicate non-volatile to volatile memory 1 : 1 with 64GB of RAM... (maybe an odd thing to bring up, but over in windows I seem to get... too many, IMO way too many RAM related crashes, access violations, memory out of bounds, heap corruption, etc... so I tend to think about it. Hopefully it becomes a thing of the past. I wouldn't miss it.)

Perfect learning opportunity. If you screw it up who cares, just re-install.

The install USB you initially used is just fine for any all recovery/backup functions you will need. Keep it handy. Linux is pretty accommodating re rearranging things. Most can be done online, some will require you to boot that install USB. As regards Win10 concerns, take a system image - go to Control panel > System and Security > Backup and Restore. Probably still says Windows 7, but works fine on Win10. Get yourself another USB to use.
There is benefit in creating a /home partition, any others is debatable, but it's your machine, so go mess around to your hearts content. Plenty of guides online how to split off /home. Easiest to use gparted (a GUI partitioner) from your install USB to do the partitioning bit.

Edit: looks like a reasonable guide here. It's for Ubuntu, but is fine for Mint too. Has a link for how to use gparted.

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That is not correct. Windows only recognizes the first partition on USB/Flash drives and I don't believe it matters if it is vfat or ntfs. Should not have a problem with an SSD. The vfat partition is needed for UEFI installs and windows must be UEFI if it is on a GPT disk.

I'm not sure I'm understanding your reference to windows as you seem to be saying you are using this SSD only for Mint? Is that the case?

It will be easier to just reinstall but you can use the install/live USB of Mint to shrink the / partition and create a separate /home partition and/or swap as mentioned above. You would need to modify system files such as /etc/fstab so reinstall is easier. Either way should be a good learning experience for someone new.

I'm not sure what your reference to 'backup' means. A backup on the same disk is just a copy, not a backup. You need it on a different disk but perhaps I misread your intent?

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So I did the full reinstall. And I created a partition for backups, I set it as the /usr partition, or Mount point rather. And then I learned that Linux takes those Mount points very seriously and very literally. And it will put things there that it says belong there. LOL.

So I got a 10 GB partition, filled with all sorts of applications and packages, and the partition map was unsalvageable, I couldn't relocate the folders, you know the score. So..

I did ANOTHER clean install. This time just /root 100GB, /home 350GB, unallocated / swap / cinnamon can sort it out 50GB.

And that seems to be working out fine. Realistically, I think I would probably prefer a more stripped down Debian distro, but there is a platform, and open source project that is essentially at the center of my migration to Linux. Among other obvious reasons, but this particular platform requires Ubuntu LTS, cinnamon fits the bill, and doesn't mess with SNAP d... so to shorten the runway, this is what I've chosen to do. And it gets high points for stability I hear.

But I'm veering off topic, into a discussion that I definitely mean to have, but I'll start a new thread for that. As for this ticket, I will thank you for your advice, all of you, and bring this to a close with:

Here is a few words about my resolution here. It's true that (1) moving partitions is not easy or practical or even possible depending on your partition map. (2) Linux is highly configurable, very flexible, but not when it comes to mount points, and the things that are put in those system-designated partitions. (3) I just did a clean installation, nothing tricky or custom. Just /root and /home and some unallocated space for swap.

So you didn't create a swap partition? Did mint actually create one? If not you're probably running with no swap. I always try to have more swap than ram. Some people recommend double.