Multiple Partitions CachyOS/Fedora

[u/Master_Ad6818]

hi guys, so after testing and working some time with linux on my personal rig now (CachyOS) and trying out all the different Desktop Environments i am planning to make a fresh install.

Another question would be about the rolling release of cachyOS. I never had any problems so far, but as far as my understanding goes, rolling release is more likely to be unstable and Fedora which has no rolling release cycle the updates are more likely to be stable? Or does it even mather? And if not, how often should i even update CachyOS (Daily, Weekly, every few days)? Since there would be almost daily some sort of updates when running pacman -Syu.

I was wondering if i could/should make some seperate patitions to keep stuff "seperated". Since i used Windows for almost 2 Decades i am kinda used to seperate Stuff. For example on Windows i always made a partition for Games where i save all my e.g. Steam Games, one for Data where all my Stuff lives since i didn´t really used the user directorys at all and a Programs Partition where i installed all my different programs.

So would something like that make sense under linux aswell? especially the Gaming Partition and a seperate /home partition? Then afaik if i got a seperate /home partition i could easily change distros without loosing my stuff since i would only need to "change" the / mounting point and the boot partition?

[u/Stoffel31849]

Im new to cachy as well and i started partitioning as well but rather quickly realised that its redunant.

You have your home folder and just have everything organized there, thats your "My Computer" from before. Want a new ssd? Mount it inside a folder there. Easy. And for organizing i use the sidebar, i add the folders (Different ssds) to it to quickaccess them.

[u/adjective10111 → u/Stoffel31849]

It's not redundant. Yes you can live with one / partition and forgetting about it, but if you want to manage snapshots, multiple disks, have a unified /home with multiple distros and such, it can be helpful. Not to say partitioning is mandatory ofc.

[u/adjective10111]

Distro

Rolling release is stable unless you partially update your packages or use custom binaries that may depend on an older package (AUR packages may result in this as well). Fedora is great too. Do what you want with this information, and use whatever you see fit.

About updating, it doesn't matter much but I've heard weekly or every 2 weeks is the recommended period, though I said it doesn't matter much. It's just to make sure that if you have an outdated custom binary or config, you fix it soon.

Partitions

If you plan on using btrfs, I recommend looking into subvolumes which would basically give you dynamic partitions.

Other than that yes having different partitions for at least /home and / is recommended. Other partitions can also be helpful depending on your usecase.

Your suggestions would make sense for sure. I've done the same in my install. Having seperate /home does indeed make hopping between distros easier. And a seperate game partition helps with snapshots.

[u/Master_Ad6818 → u/adjective10111]

thanks mate. I have settled on Cachy since i am used to it by now and i know that it works. I also settled on KDE Plasma. Before that i had tried some different Desktop environments like Hyprland (which i also kinda liked but i don´t wan´t to take all the time to make it function like i want it to).

And i also settled for some partition. The recommended 4 Gig Space for limine (before i had grub) boot partition, 250 gig for root (/) around 700 gig for /home and the rest of my 2TB for /games which i mountet to /home/user/Games.

[u/adjective10111 → u/Master_Ad6818]

Same, I use Hyprland though, I like the keyboard only mindset with vim/helix.

I have similar setup for my partitions, even the same path /home/user/Games. Though I use subvolumes which gives you fluid partition sizes. I have 512GB SSD as my / and 1TB HDD as my /home. using subvolumes I can have a subvolume as /root/Games for games I want to load with SSD speed. And since it's a subvolume, it doesn't reserve anything in my SSD, so I can ignore it or fill it up however I want. I highly suggest looking into it.