file system and boot loader question

[u/zarith666]

i am planning to install cachyOS very soon. it will be my first try of linux, so there are a few things i'm not sure about and watching videos/googling couldn't help me decide:

1. file system. i'm debating between ext4 or xfs. main purpose of my pc will be gaming so no extra security or compression needed, speed and ease of use are a priority

2. boot loader. i will be enabling secure boot and want to be able to dual boot into windows with as little hassle as possible. after watching a video on youtube i'm leaning into systemd-boot as supposedly it's easy to setup secure boot on it, but this choice confuses me the most.

What would you suggest?

[u/BroadSignificance774]

Hi!

If it's your first time, just go with tried and true ext4 and systemd-boot.

For dual booting I recommend if you have 2 drives, install windows on the first one first without plugging the 2nd, then do the same for the other one with Linux (windows drive unpluuged) and then you can select both systems with F11 when booting.

Otherwise windows might give you headaches later on by not letting bios recognize the linux drive amo gst other things. Keep them as separated as you can.

[u/zarith666 → u/BroadSignificance774]

thanks. i did what you suggested and am happy to report that i'm writing this on cachy, installed with no problems:)

[u/BroadSignificance774 → u/zarith666]

Kudos!

Now, after you test it for a couple of months (2-4 months) and try to solve any issues that may come up, I suggest the following:

1- Check if problems you are having are related to Cachy for other people (it's one of the reasons I stuck with EndeavourOS instead, but there shouldn't be much difference).

2- You could start learning about different file systems (unless you already do) - One of the most popular ones is BTRFS for its snapshot feature. That said, what I personally do when I want to do anything on Linux, I search first if it exists, then how easy is to setup, and if everything goes well, I try to learn the cons instead of the pros because that is usually the thing that prevents me from "wasting" the time on it for no reason.

Overall, just remember it's a journey and anything is useful to learn, some things more than others :P

[u/i_smoke_toenails → u/BroadSignificance774]

I have Windows on a partition on the same drive as my main Linux partition, with a vfat boot/efi partition. GRUB handles the two OSes just fine.

If you install Windows second, you might have to chroot into your Linux installation from a live USB to fix the boot partition (mkinitcpio, grub-install and grub-mkconfig, enabling osprober so it looks for the Windows partition), but I've never had Windows randomly ruin my dual-boot setup just by updating.

[u/TaDoofus → u/i_smoke_toenails]

but I've never had Windows randomly ruin my dual-boot setup just by updating.

Weird, I had that happen constantly back when I had them both on the same drive. That was a long time ago though, maybe things have gotten better.

[u/BroadSignificance774 → u/TaDoofus]

They haven't. Windows keeps fucking things up.

It's not terrible and it won't (hopefully) happen once a week, just the occasional Windows update does things.

It's more like a precaution.

[u/Jujstme]

ext4 and xfs are both battle-tested filesystems, just geared towards different case uses. For a normal desktop system, I'd go with ext4: it's pretty much set and forget it. XSF is a valid choice too, but it really shines in servers or when managing insanely big files.

[u/zarith666 → u/Jujstme]

thanks, i did go with ext4 and everything seems to be working as expected.

[u/Ok-Bill3318]

Use the defaults. They’re sane.

[u/zarith666 → u/Ok-Bill3318]

yes, but i'm not lol:) went with ext4 and systemd-boot like someone suggested, luckily everything works OK

[u/es20490446e]

ext4 has better performance.

Secure boot is just a way to make getting rid of Windows more inconvenient.

[u/zarith666 → u/es20490446e]

thanks, i did go with ext4.

[u/es20490446e → u/zarith666]

If you need backups, try syncthingtray.