HI---Just ordered a new 256gb samsung ssd. I intend to dual boot linux with windows 10. Can someone tell me a good partition schedule. My history says that I need at least 70GB for my Windows partition. How many prtitions and how much space is needed for Linux. I have 12gb of ram, do i need a SWAP partition along with ROOT and HOME. Do you suggest any other partions in addition to SWAP--ROOT---HOME?
Thanks FRank

well Windows 10 takes up circa 30 gig ; but then i've seen on relatively new laptops sold with Windows 10 and with a 30 gig hard drive that Microsoft wanted to do 2.8 gig update for a hd already full, so your probably prudent to have 70 gig.


Lets put it this way 256 - 70 = 186 . Swap lets come to that. I play with php web development, dont do gaming and most basics you can think of geany. medit, video editor etc and my Slackware current takes up circa 36 gig so you should be fine.

A few basics : install Windows First otherwise it irritates you by wiping any reference to anything else.

With slackware you can just have a root partition and then uses have space within that, but a lot of distro have /home you don't mention which Linux distro you have an eye on

Sorry but I'm pretty sure it needs more. Or if, then there's 0 bytes left for personal data & app installation.
I'd try to get Windows to relinquish roughly half of that SSD.
You don't necessarily need swap with 12GB of RAM, but it's really safer to have. At least 4GB I'd say.
You don't need a separate /home partition, but it can't hurt to have a separate partition for media files & documents. Maybe that should be shared with Windows then?

I always installed more on the Linux side as am not rich, love freedom and run Debian-sid so personally would give microcough no more than 1/2 the drivespace... but, that's just me.

There are a LOT of dual-boot tutorials out there; pretty much all of them tell you to install Windows first, so that would be my first suggestion. That would also tell you how much space it takes up, and let you estimate how much Windows-disk you want to leave free for any Windows data. Windows *CANNOT* read/write Linux partitions on disk, but Linux can read Windows...so if you allocate 100GB for Windows, that's ALL it's going to have...whereas Linux can use ANY part of the disk, including Windows.

One of the first hits in Google for how to dual-boot Mint and Windows 10:
https://itsfoss.com/guide-install-li...-boot-windows/

..which walks you through everything. Let the Linux installer create and size the partitions.

However, given your previous threads:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ed-4175676203/
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...pn-4175676295/

...not sure the tutorial is going to help much, since you previously complained about step-by-step directions not being good enough.

I put an SSD as a second hard drive in my computer next to the old Windows drive. Then I installed Linux on the SSD, with the old Windows install remaining on the old drive.

This way you don't have to mess around.

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Unless your current hard drive is dying, why not leave windoze where it is and use the new drive for Linux?

See above, or refer to what previous posters have said.

I have a home folder which is part of the /root partition. But my data is on a seperate partition and called by another name (eg /car) and is the rest of the drive, minus /swap and /

As for the size of the of the partitions, as someone entering the linux world, on the basis that whomever developed the installer (wrote the iso) has some knowledge of what the distro needs, I'd suggest following the installer's suggestions.

Please bear in mind that most terminal commands do not cross over. Thus you'll need to learn a completely different set of commands to achieve the same result. As in (I believe) cls empties the windows terminal while clear does the same thing in Linux. And dir becomes ls in linux, etc.

One last consideration.Windoze, usually, does not read linux partitions. So you can, usually, not work on anything stored on a Linux partition while using Windoze. The exception being linux partitions formatted to NTFS.

QuickBreakfast-----Linux on its own HD sounds good. Can you tell me how to boot into the Linux drive at startup? I know in dual boot you have the choice between windows and Linux, is it the same?

The reason I "complained" about some tutorials I found is that the screen shots so often did not match what my computer showed, making it confusing. I have found a tutorial from TecMint but it is geared to UEFI which I don't have. Can that Tutorial be used for a BIOS system also?

That "*CANNOT*" is a little loud considering with workarounds one can? (At least a while back when I gamed on 10 pro,,, I'm only on Linux now.
E.g: https://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/ &c.)

I have more than two dozen operational multiboot systems, with on average well over a dozen OS installations each, a few with more than 40, so hundreds of partitions spread across >30 disks.

My Windows 10 system partitions are all 48GB. On them the only optional software I have is VLC, Chrome, Firefox, SeaMonkey & IrfanView. I disable Windows fastboot, hibernation, and swap file, set system restore to a bare minimum, and keep a separate NTFS filesystem for Windows' user data. As yet none of my Windows installations are on GPT or UEFI PCs. I don't use Windows much. It spends more time updating itself than doing anything useful to me. Most of the time I boot it with the ethernet cable unplugged, to keep it from wasting so much time and bandwidth updating.

For at least the past two decades, I always install Windows after fully partitioning the target to my needs, and successfully installing at least one Linux distro.

I never install Grub in any MBR, instead booting from generic Legacy/DOS/Windows/OS2 MBR code that Windows is happy to leave undisturbed.

70GB should be more than plenty for a 256GB SSD to be shared with Linux, depending how much software you add to Windows, how much you use Windows, how system restore is configured, and whether you keep a separate filesystem for Windows' user data, as I routinely do for both Linux and Windows.

In most situations when you install a linux distro (a variation of linux) it will search all, connected, hard drives for any other operating system(s) and add any OS it finds to the relevant page during the boot. So it becomes a simple matter of selecting the OS you want to use.

The trick to do this is to enter your BIOS and set your linux hard drive to be the first drive it looks for to boot.

Since virtually every motherboard is different telling you how to enter your BIOS is currently not possible. (and by the way anytime you want assistance please state your electronic marvel's specifications, the distro, what your trying to do, what you have attempted and the results.. .. read error messages.. .. of those attempts.

yes

One last point. ALWAYS have an external copy of all the data you may even remotely want to keep BEFORE doing an install. aka. Backup your data BEFORE doing an install.

Sorry - accidental post.

Am having removed.

You need to have your bootloader (most distros use GRUB) installed on the first drive where the BIOS/UEFI can easily find it. But once it is running, it can boot Linux from any disk.

And we repeatedly ASKED YOU what didn't match so we can try to help, but you never told us. You also said the VPN providers didn't support Linux, yet all of them noted specifically stated they DID support Linux, and had step-by-step tutorials. And having a setup box that has slightly different wording or pictures, doesn't mean the terms were different, and if you were confused...again, all of the VPN providers you mentioned supported Linux, and could have answered your questions.
Since you don't tell us what kind of computer you have or provide details, again....what do you think we can tell you??? mrmazda knows what they're doing, but I personally would load Windows first, since it's far more touchy about things.

You were given a link to a tutorial, again with complete steps and pictures. And if your system is fairly new, you DO have UEFI, but AGAIN, the installer detects such things and acts accordingly. And going back to the "Question Guidelines" for LQ, doing a bit of basic research would be a good thing. Most things you can find easily will tell you that if you're having UEFI problems, to switch your BIOS back to legacy mode, which sidesteps the whole issue.

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