I purchased a Dell laptop (will receive it in April 2017) with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS installed in a single partition. I want to use gparted to shrink the partition to (not sure what size but thinking about a 1/4 TB and creating a second partition with the remainder. I would like to have my home folder on that 2nd partition.

What do I have to do (as simple as possible) to get Ubuntu to point to and
recognize that the Home folder is moved and how do I move it?

Thanks in advance.

Prepare yourself by using your favourite search engine. Ubuntu (self-)help is exceptionally well documented on the web. If you have concerns re something you find, post back (with a link) so someone can comment specifically.
Use of a gparted liveCD is best.

at first, be care about that, because you may destroy your ubuntu completely (although it is not a "big" problem, because you can reinstall it any time, if you have an install cd/pendrive in your hands).
second, you cannot shrink the root partition of a living/working system, you ought to boot a live CD instead (the one I mentioned before).
third, choose your preferred method to resize it - gparted is a good choice - look for a link/description/howto and ask if that was unclear or you are in doubt.

I think that is best done when you first get the system. Agree with the cautionary thoughts already offered. Also would note two things (1) there is a way to tell the system that a user's /home directory is elsewhere and then not specifically move the /home partition (2) If you intend to move the user's /home directories, why place it on the same physical disk? I'd put it on a different disk because I prefer to separate system from user.

I would go now and purchase a retail copy of Windows Pro, wipe the sucker clean of anything and everything that Dell stuck on the box, and repartition it as you like. (Don't buy "Home Editions.")

"OEM" copies – especially from Dell – are not "the real deal." At the worst possible time you might even find that their disk doesn't work, or that it will reset everything to some "default configuration" that you didn't specify and that you have no control over. Spend the money to buy an independent copy. This is also an excellent time to reformat the drive and to run SMART diagnostics. This will cause the drive to rewrite all of the data and thus to examine every spot. Yes, it will take a long time.

Partitioning/Home/Moving may help.

If there is anything you might want to keep, take a backup first.

Repartitioning can sometimes be inordinately slow when resizing large partitions (up to several hours).

How would that help anyone with Ubuntu pre-installed (e.g., OP), or anyone who wants only Linux on his Dell?
That's completely counter to my experience with genuine Dell installation media. AFAICT, the Dell media I have differ from generic Windows media only in being able to install Windows successfully without having to input any key. e.g.
P/N D0V2K, Windows 7 Professional SP1 64 bit, "Reinstallation DVD".

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I would use clonezilla to create an image file of the entire hard drive.
Download Ubuntu
Do a clean install so you can create your own partitions. If it does not work well, you can always re-image your hard drive. Cheers!

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I don't know Ubuntu, so I can only make general comments. To do what you suggest you will want to shrink your current partition (using as suggested, gparted on a cd or dvd, allocate the rest of the disk as what will be /home and create a file system on it. Then the difficult bit starts. You would want to copy your current home folder. it is called /home/username, to the new partition and alter your boot procedure to mount the new partition on /home at boot time. This mean modifying system files, possibly one called fstab.

If you do a new clean install, this is all done for you by the installer. So I would go with ceantuco's solution. If you want to be safe, you could shrink your current partition and install a new copy of Ubuntu on the rest, using a separate /home. Installing Grub2 allows you to choose whether you use the old or new distribution. If all goes well, you can scrap the old partition.

By the way, if you have a separate /home, then / only contains system and run-time files, probably 10-20GB, or 20-40GB if BTRFS is used. Mine currently is 29GB, which is adequate. So 1/4TB really is overkill.

Oh Ubuntututu ....

if it was not Ubunututu it'd be sooo easy.

Log in ROOT user. open gparted. resize .... nope. got a be unmounted to play with partitions like that.

boot live Linux OS with gparted or boot a gparted USB stick.

resize partition.
created a new partition with new raw part ext4 or whatever type you want.
any thing goes wrong LQ here to help.

I'm going on a three day break j/k

P.S. if all goes well, which it should, do not forget to ensure that all of your hidden files have been moved, or you can just let the system recreate them when you start an app.

2. if you copied them then do not forget to get rid of them as you'll be mounting the new /home on different partition so that old home will just disappear even though it will still be there with your stuff in it.

so Q:

what would you do to remove the contents in your old home prior to actually moving into your new home AFTER you've ensured everything you need has been relocated to your new home so you can regain that space for your system side?

50 pt brain teaser.

Q2:
if you to get rid of that old user directory and its contents before rebooting to mount your new home. then what problems will you cause yourself?

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I have a raid 1 Synology NAS. Can you have your /home folders on a networked NAS partition?

And if so how do you do it?

Doubt it but guess you could run into a uefi issue.

Not really a big deal if you mess it up I'd think in any choice of options. Should be rather easy to just take an install media and make what you want. Pretty sure Dell should be 100% native Ubuntu but you never know. Could have some junk in it.
Heck, it would be good learning anyway for you to just reload it as you wish from scratch. May have to do it sooner or later. Better now and know how to recover.

You can have /home/user or just /home anywhere you want. The only condition is it has to be available before user logs in. Use vipw command as root to edit the location of users home.

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That sounds complicated.

In my view, I'd save everything on the /home folder onto a seperate partition.
Then install a new Ubuntu OS onto 'unallocated space' on the HDD. During the install wizard, you can then choose to have /root and /home on separate partitions.
After the successful install of the new Ubuntu OS, transfer your saved files (which is located on a different partition) onto your new /home partition.
Just seems simpler that way.

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