this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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I just got a new laptop and installed Linux on it. I mainly run OpenSUSE.

Getting full encryption on both was a bit of a challenge and I had no idea what I'm doing. Will having the swap partition in the middle break things? Did I really need so many partitions (Mint and OpenSUSE don't show up in eachother's boot menu)?

I'm probably not gonna change this layout (because reinstallation seems like a pain) unless the swap partition's position is a problem. I'm just curious how many mistakes I made.

EDIT: I'm not upgrading my drive capacity. I do not need it.

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[–] data1701d@startrek.website 13 points 6 days ago

Scared

On a more serious note, as others have said, you'll probably burn through these weird storage limitations quickly.

Also, what do you mean by "sensitive matters" on Mint? Because almost any way you spin it, I feel like it's not a great idea:

  • If you're talking professional, confidential work with clients, keeping it on the same device where you do anything personal sounds like a terrible idea, and it's probably worth it to shell out for a dedicated device just for this.
  • If it's more personal things like government documents, medical records, and other things I'll neglect to name here, running a separate operating system just for those just feels like unnecessary paranoia and will cause you unnecessary trouble. If you're careful, it shouldn't be a problem - the major browsers prevent file access through protections against cross-site scripting.

Also, as I said in another comment here, please upgrade that drive before you put a lot of data on it. If you don't and you run out of storage later (a near-certainty on 256GB), you'll have to go through the effort of getting everything copied, which may include equipment purchases and several hours of your time when you could jut do it right now while your important files are still small enough to fit on a flash drive right now. Save yourself the future trouble.

Anyhow, I wish you happy Linux usage.

[–] phanto@lemmy.ca 88 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Never more in my life have I wanted to send a stranger a larger hard drive.

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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 57 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

I think the partitioning itself is fine, but I wouldn't have 3 operating systems on a 256 GB NVMe, because I'd be running out of space a lot.

if you won't ever use Windows, you can nuke it. Then I'd consider making one of the Linux ones a VM - if you're trying out that distro. That will cut down 12 partitions to 5.

Lastly, you can look into btrfs to make better use of space between (the current) p11 and p12: you can make them subvolumes that won't eat up each other's storage when not in use.

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[–] Tenkard@lemmy.ml 34 points 1 week ago

I would create another couple of efi partitions, just to confuse attackers more

[–] gagootron@feddit.org 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I recommend that you take a look at LVM. It can help you manage your partitions without much planning beforehand.

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[–] igemnace@lemmy.zip 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)
  • You don't need multiple EFI system partitions! That's why Mint and OpenSUSE don't show up in each other's boot menu (or at least that's the first step, depending on your bootloader). The intention with the ESP is you put all EFI executables for dual-booting (and triple- and beyond) in there.
  • Swap partition is fine anywhere. But as an aside, you can also just use a swapfile. Makes it easy to change the size dynamically. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Swap#Swap_file
  • /dev/nvme0n1p6 I'd wonder why that's needed. /boot on /dev/nvme0n1p10 too, that's not strictly necessary.

None are game-breaking! You can just note these down for next time you have the itch to tinker.

[–] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Sorry for the late reply, I didn't have time this week to look into what a swapfile was and I delayed my response until I did. I will definitely be using a swap file since I do not ever use hibernation and encrypting my swap partition seems like a hassle.

I'm currently reinstalling things (after accidentally bricking the Windows partition and finding myself dissatisfied with openSUSE). Hopefully with just 4 partitions total (EFI, Kubuntu encrypted, Mint Xfce encrypted, data). I am removing the /boot from each because unless I'm leaving /boot unencrypted there's no reason to separate it out. Unfortunately encrypting /boot means GRUB doesn't detect it automatically in the Kubuntu installer so I'm still working out how to correct that.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 days ago

You do want windows EFI separate as it occasionally likes to turf the Linux efi entries. With opensuse it will probe foreign OS and add chainloader entries to point to the other EFI bootloaders. You set the OpenSUSE to load first and choose mint or windows from the grub menu

[–] krolden@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago (21 children)

Why don't you delete windows

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[–] stewarpt@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 week ago (11 children)

Why keep the windows partition if you don't use it?

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[–] fushuan@piefed.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

You just got a new laptop and it has 250 GB of disk space?? Are you mad???

My Pendrive has 256 GB!

[–] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I was looking for: Cheap, used, 1920p display, AMD CPU, 16gb RAM, presence of SSD, Linux bluetooth drivers, at least 2 USB ports, and a non-American brand. Storage capacity is something I'd only really care about on my gaming computer (or if I was still engaging in piracy).

[–] SitD@lemy.lol 8 points 1 week ago

nuke it 😎

[–] gonzo-rand19@moist.catsweat.com 7 points 1 week ago (10 children)

I really don't think 60 GB will be enough for daily use unless you have your home folder on a separate drive, which it doesn't seem is the case from your screenshot.

I have mine on a separate drive and my system partition (150 GB) is half-full. Is there a reason for your 25 GB per Linux installation rule?

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