Hi all,
I'm a newbie
I'd like to install GNU/Linux on a single drive (SSD) desktop computer.
The filesystem of choice is BTRFS and a couple of thing are not really clear to me:
- is a swap partition still necessary and what's the best fs for it?
- what partition scheme would you suggest?

I thought about 2 different btrfs partitions, one for /home and one for / (root) but from what I read if I'm giving the raw drive to BTRFS that would be more beneficial performance-wise, is that correct? (actually I don't even know if 2 btrfs partitions on the same drive is even possible).

If should I got for "donating" the raw/whole drive to btrfs which subvolumes scheme would you suggest for an easy management of the snapshots and backups? should /home be a subvolume or that's not really necessary...

Many thanks and sorry if some questions may sound silly!

Swap is a separate issue from the filesystem. If you are going to use it on a laptop with a hibernate, then you have to have one for the system to save to.

If you have lots of memory, and don't expect to run programs that overflow the available space, then you don't need one.

As for having /boot and /root only, it partially depends on your distribution. Does the distributed grub version have support for btrfs? If it does, then you don't really need a separate /boot partition.

Keeping /home separate from the system is a bit more useful as it makes it easier to reinstall without damaging the files there. It is also a bit easier to backup (some procedures prefer backing up entire partitions/filesystems, others work by copying files).

I can't make recommendations on btrfs (not having used it yet).

See my answer over at the Debian forums:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=565502#p565502

I didn't think of hibernation though -- BTRFS doesn't allow a swapfile so you will need a swap partition equal to your RAM.

Swap space at the size of your RAM is the MINIMUM. If you have any applications that do happen to be using swap, there isn't enough room... Most recommendations would be for twice RAM size, but it really depends on what is being done with the system at the time hibernating is activated.

what about if I'm not using hybernating?
This is gonna be a desktop machine after all.

Thanks

If not using hibernating, then you don't really need swap - unless you are running programs that overflow your memory limits.