Optimal install templates for testing Slackware? (discussion/post)
I want to do more testing with Slackware now that I'm getting more used to it in my first week (still have a long way to go). This is mainly a theoretical discussion / suggestion thread. Opinions are welcome, and I would love to hear multiple ideas. As of right now I using VMWare: Workstation Pro to experiment with Slackware. Please keep that in mind during your feedback, although I still would appreciate hosted setups as well (they may not differ as much). Mainline question: What would be an ideal setup from a clean install for testing purposes? Testing in this case would be for programming.Sub-questions that feed into the mainline question include:
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I always use cfdisk because I understand it. I'm an old DOSsie and cfdisk is very like DOS fdisk. It's never given me any issues. I've never bothered to understand fdisk because I've never had to.
I always create a separate /home partition, regardless of the distro. Generally, I've found that a 25-30 GB root partition is more than roomy enough for everything else, and I allocate the rest of the HDD to /home. The only exception I can think of is that, if you plan to do something special in /opt, like run XAMMP and test websites, you may want to either enlarge /root or put /opt on a separate partition adequate to meet the needs for what you want to do. With 16 GB RAM, I would allocate no more than 4GB swap, maybe less. On this machine, I have 16GB RAM, 4GB swab, and run various VMs regularly (a VM of Endeavor Linux is running right now), and swap is hardly ever touched. The only exception I know of is this: if you wish to use hibernation (I do not), swap should be slightly larger than RAM, because, in hibernation, the image is stored to swap. I know that some persons no longer use a separate swap partition if they have lots of RAM, but I like the predictability of a fixed-size swap. And HDD space is cheap these days. As regards install, I just do a full install. If I'm installing on a desktop, I usually set a static ip address. Just a few thoughts. |
If you have a big hard drive I'd allocate ~100G to root so you don't have to worry about running out of space. That takes care of /tmp (where packages are built) and whatever you install in /usr and /opt.
Having /home on a separate partition is sweet. I have different partitions for files like music, books, games (Steam Library), and movies, etc so whatever happens to root my files are unaffected. |
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As for the label types, gpt is for drives bigger than 2 TB or that use UEFI, and dos is for everything else. Unless someone more knowledgeable contradicts me, you can safely ignore the rest. Quote:
When I started with Slackware, I followed howtos and only had a root (/) partition, /boot and /usr/local, but that was not a good setup. Right now I have a /boot partition (1 GB), root (/, 80 GB), /root (10 GB. This is where I keep my slackbuilds), /usr/local (10 GB. I keep there small personal programs that don't need installation and symlinks to TexLive files), /var/log (10 GB), /var/www (50 GB. That's where my web projects are), /opt (150 GB. I keep here whatever I feel does not belong under /, like Java, TexLive or crafty). The rest of the space (around 600 GB) is occupied by the /home partition. Most of them are virtually empty, because I allocated much more space than they actually needed. But why not? I have disk to spare. Anyway, you probably don't need the same partitions that I use (if you don't do web programming, you would not be using /var/www, for instance). Your own partitioning style will come to you with time. The question I ask myself when I partition is this: “What would I want to keep if I had to reinstall?” Quote:
That said, if you use VMs or play videogames, you probably need more RAM than me and more swap. My advice is that you go crazy: swap is cheap. It is disk space, after all. Use as much as you have RAM. Quote:
So, my advice here is: Make sure you know what each of them does and disable those you don't need. Hope this helps. |
Yes this is great feedback for gaps in my knowledge. I am OCD about fundamentals, so this is a great post for gaining insight on the approach of understanding the Linux OS. Trying to learn things like: how it's all pieced together, how each element works with each other are all things I have to re-learn again. Coming from an all Windows and no Linux background, I am re-learning how to ride a bike. I don't believe in shortcuts, and I tend to be very technical but competitively humble. Thanks for experienced opinions!:study:
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My two cents.
I know some are going to throw me rocks, but I don't care. Even if I use to in the past, I now never have more separate partitions than the strict minimum.(only root, swap, and efi boot if needed) I have an external HD for backup, physical separation. I find it more efficient and simple, in opposition to 36 partitions which are for the vast majority empty.(but it's my way to do) All testing/programming/specific work is made in virtual machines. For the sub-questions: 1- cgdisk Vs fdisk vs cgdisk vs other, try and make your own opinion, keep the one you are the most comfortable with. 3- with 16GB RAM, 4GB swap is good. Later you will learn to change swap parameters if you want. 4-For what I think, it's always better to add something if needed than having to remove something unnecessary. |
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I like to fine tune my hardware setup with primary partitions for a bit of granularity & performance
/var --> slower hdd -- log files/variables /tmp --> nvme -- speed up the build process / --> nvme /home --> nvme /repo --> hdd --local repository and backup /swap --> negligible space - nvme for speed Beneficial if you have, or want to conserve limited ssd space. |
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All of these VM's are installed with the recommended Full Install to a two partition hard disk, one Linux (30 GB), one Swap. (2 GB). I give them 2 CPU's, 2G of memory and use the Bridge Adapter setting for Network so the are assigned IP from the LAN. Before I start a testing session I first make sure my VM is up-to-date with the latest ChangeLog.txt. Once that is done, I create a shapshot to save state of VM at that point. Once I am done with the testing session, I simply restore the snapshot to make that VM clean again and delete the snapshot. Most of my testing is package building. I really helps to have a clean system for this. This is especially important when I have a SBo SlackBuld that fails on this computer running Slackware64-current; which is definitely NOT a clean system. I can test to see if it will build on a clean system. (A requirement for Ponce's SBo scripts not building on current thread.) Quote:
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