Partition Sizing and Examples

For normal use we recommend ext3, it is the default file system for Joatha and well maintained.

With the Partition-Manager gparted hard drives are partitioned and/or formatted. The program has a graphical interface and is self-explanatory.

Gparted can also shrink or move partitions and also NTFS partitions. Gparted is not yet fully developed and labels itself as experimental, but if you move on in an orderly way, you should not encounter any problems. See full documentation for gparted. Changes to ntfs-partitions can also be made with proprietary tools such as Partition Magic (TM) and Acronis (TM).

ALWAYS BACK-UP YOUR DATA!

Should a partition show up as mounted, we have to close the partition -manager and unmount the device (right click on the mounted device-icon on the desktop->unmount). Should you have a swap partition, unmount it with:"sudo swapoff -a" in a Konsole. That done, we can start the partition manager again. In principle, 3 gb is more than sufficient for a hd-install, but you won't have much fun with this. A reasonable minimum install should have 5 - 8 gb. For those new to linux, we suggest only 2 partitions for a start (root und swap), because this simplifies your first install quite a bit. It's better to establish an extra partition for /home.

Advanced users can also have additional partitions for /var, /tmp, ...etc, for special reasons. Going into detail here would take us too far off our path, though. You really should have a swap partition (equivalent to the windows swapfile, but is much more effective). For normal usage, the swap partition should be up to twice your ram. The standard filesystem for Joatha is ext3.

For data-exchange with a Windows installation you must use vfat (fat32). Whoever wants to use XFS for / (root) must create an extra /boot partition (ext2) or use lilo (because grub doesn't work with xfs reliably). The installer at this point supports xfs on / only through editing the file ~/.Joathaconf.

Whomever creates more than 1 partition should write their names down for later! Having done all this, save the changes (the floppy icon) and close the partition-manager. Here are some simple examples for different hd-sizes and different types of use, everything rounded off.

Tryout-Config - 60GBfor a pc, where windows takes quite a bit of space
Disk Sizee Filesystem Mountpoint/System
hda1 20GB NTFS WindowsXP
hda5 30GB FAT32 Data for Win and Linux
hda6 8GB ext3 /
hda7 500MB Swap Swap
TV and Video-PC - 200GB no Windows for big Files (e.g. Video) XFS is best.
Disk Size Filesystem Mountpoint/System
hda1 8GB ext3 /
hda5 6GB ext3 /home
hda6 5GB ext3 /var
hda7 180GB XFS /video
hda8 500MB Swap Swap
Standard-PC with Windows 120GB to use the best from both worlds.
Disk Size Filesystem Mountpoint/System
hda1 20GB NTFS WindowsXP
hda5 8GB ext3 /
hda6 20GB ext3 /home
hda7 70GB FAT32 Data exchange WindowsXP-Linux
hda8 500MB Swap Swap
Linux Gaming- and MediaPC 160GB
Disk Size Filesystem Mountpoint/System
hda1 18GB ext3 /
hda5 20GB ext3 /home
hda6 30GB ext3 /opt
hda7 90GB ext3 /data
hda8 2GB ext3 /var
hda9 500MB Swap Swap
Linux and Windows on 20 GB
Disk Size Filesystem Mountpoint/System
hda1 5GB NTFS Win-System
hda2 10GB FAT32 Windows-Programs and Data for Windows and Linux
hda5 5GB ext3 /
hda6 500MB Swap Swap

This allocation is advisble when there's little space on the harddisk (e.g. on a Laptop). Windows is installed on a separate 3-5 GB sized partition with nothing else on it. All programs and files are on the second bigger partition. Whoever has more disk space can make this partition bigger or divide windows-programs and data into 2 partitions.

General

For Joatha without any special multimedia-applications or games 5 GB is sufficient, for data you have the fat32-partition. There are many ways to partion your harddrive. These examples should be enough for a start. It makes sense to add a second hard drive to enhance performance, comfort and security. In that case windows always goes on the first harddisk!