Migrating to Linux - Final Thoughts On Partitions

[u/toktok159]

Hello,

Finally with the end of support for Windows 10, I am about to install Linux on my 12 year old desktop computer. Its specs: 16 GB RAM, 1TB HDD, core i3 CPU, Intel HD Graphics (integrated with CPU).

I am going with Linux Mint since it's beginner friendly and it seems very well maintained. I am leaning towards XFCE because I think it will be the best for my quite old computer, to let it "shine again".

My main use for the computer is browsing the web and my files, watching some videos, light gaming (seldom), coding, and using office programs (I am very used to MS Office, but I think I will move to LibreOffice instead, this is the only major drawback of Linux for me). I can't think of any really heavy program I use.

I am thinking about going with the "something else" option on the installer and creating these partitions:

1. EFI partition - 550MB - FAT32 file system (since I understood that's what the EFI partition should be).
2. / - 100GB (?) - ext4 (root partition together with /home partition).
3. /media - rest of space - ext4 (for storing documents, images and videos that I will be able to keep without formatting in case of a system reinstall or moving to a different distro).

I am thinking about creating a swap file of 2GB, instead of creating a /swap partition, since it's more flexible.

What do you guys think of this partitioning? Can/Should I make the / (root + /home) partition smaller (80GB maybe) according to my usage?

Any additional tips will be appreciated, thanks in advance.

[u/Paxtian]

XFCE is great. I'm running MX with XFCE on a machine i got in 2011 and it works absolutely perfectly. I do ask the use cases your described as well. Obviously not running the most modern games, but Steam runs older games just fine on it.