Greetings. I am new to Slackware Linux, despite having used Linux (Debian) for a few years on servers and homemade routers/firewalls. I am also new to having Linux as a main desktop.

That being said, I have a few questions I need some help with.

First, can the same partitioning schemes be applied to desktop systems and be used efficiently? Here is the layout I was planning to put on my 60Gig hard drive:

/dev/hda1 - /boot
/dev/hda2 - /
/dev/hda3 - swap
/dev/hda4 - EXTENDED
/dev/hda5 - /var
/dev/hda6 - /tmp
/dev/hda7 - /opt
/dev/hda8 - /usr
/dev/hda9 - /usr/local ?? I know this is used on FreeBSD, not sure here tho
/dev/hda10 - /home

2) The Final question is on dependencies, security updates, program updates, etc. Now Debian has apt-get, *BSD has ports...how is this handled in Slackware, and is it diligent, accurate, and thorough?


Sorry for the long post for only 2 questions. Thanks in advance for any replies.


--WTFPWN

Hi WTFPWN:

Wow - that seems lik a lot of partitions for a 60G drive. I have 11 on my 250G and am sometimes sorry (when i run out of space).

My understanding is that you need the following partitions:

swap
root

If you don't add others they will be under root.



Others are for future maintenance - like:

home
usr
opt

The theory here is to be able to maintain your won data/programs when upgrading or changing distros. I believe without a great deal of disicipline - this will be difficult to say the least - and maybe more hastle than it's worth.

and still others are for multi boot ease of use -

home (again)
boot

This is so you can mount boot/home and have the right one for the distro you are using.

I have a home partition, several root partitions, a swap and several data. There are endless ways to set it up, but make sure you have enough room for your data whereever it's going. running out of space can be a catastrophy when running some apps ... data can be lost etc ...someone else needs to answer the slax update ?

I will refer you to the newly updated and possibly not officially yet released alt.os.linux.slackware newsgroup FAQ.
Partitioning- http://l0k1.free.fr/aolsfaq.html#XX66
Package Management- http://l0k1.free.fr/aolsfaq.html#XX72

There is no real dependency checking that is built in to Slackware as it is assumed everyone is intelligent enough to handle it on their own if they are a Slackware user.

Thank you all for the replies


WTFPWN

I see nothing improper about your partitioning scheme. Partitioning is part science, part voodoo, part philosophy. Perhaps the following will help:

Disk Partitioning

Welcome to LQ. Key comment/advice: Partitioning schemes are highly subjective, and everyone's got their own opinion as to what is "best". There really is no right or wrong answer, so go with what you consider to be appropriate. That said, for a 60G drive I'd suggest a 100Mg /boot, a 256Mg swap (regardless of your RAM), 30G for /home, and the other ~30G for / and its subdirectories. (Give ~8G to /usr)

Note: all of those allocations are more than you really need (except possibly for /home) but it's always nice to have room for expansion. Again, let me repeat that partitioning schemes are totally subjective, and assuming you've already settled on a good scheme for yourself, just scale it up, eg, if you had a 40G drive with the scheme you listed, just retain that same scheme but make each partition 1.5 times larger on the 60G drive. Good luck with it

Thank you for the help everyone! Just as info, here is how I decided to partition my workstation:

/dev/hda1 - /boot 32Mb, I won't be dual booting so this will house my kernel stuff
/dev/hda2 - swap 1Gb, I have 1.5Gb of physical RAM
/dev/hda3 - / 1Gb, basic root filesystem for subdirs
/dev/hda4 - EXTENDED
/dev/hda5 - /tmp 1Gb, for install temp files, etc
/dev/hda6 - /var 3Gb, for spools, logs, sniffer captures, etc
/dev/hda7 - /var/log 3Gb, same as /var
/dev/hda8 - /usr 20Gb, any OS specific files, deps, etc.
/dev/hda9 - /usr/local 20Gb, any non-OS specific programs
/dev/hda10 - /home 10Gb, for personal files, etc.


I may increase /usr/local to 30Gb depending on how much stuff I install but this should more than suffice for now. Like I said this will be mainly for development and basic office stuff like email, spreadsheets, documents, and maybe some music.


Regards
WTFPWN

Excellent - have fun with Linux!