Laptop Recommendations?

[Chopstick]

Teunis, I am assuming you are refering to my post about the EFI boot partitions?
Although I wouldn't call myself a specialist.
At first I followed the common advice to at least use a separate home partition, but to be honest, I really don't see the benefit in doing that.
First of all, I would need several encrypted partitions and unlock all of them at every boot, which would be more hassle that it's worth. But even without full disk encryption I stil don't see the benefit. The only thing that has happened repeatedly is that my system crashed because the system partition was full or I was not able to install something system-wide because I didn't have enough space left. In my view having multiple partitions just needlessly chops up usable dispace into smaller, less usable pieces.
Anyway, I'd be happy to hear what benefits you see in using multiple partitions.

[Snowhog]

The principle benefit of having at least two partitions; one for root; one for /home; is that should "something wicked this way come" in the root partition, you only need to reinstall the OS and mark that /home NOT be formatted. When you have only a single partition for the whole system, and reinstalling the OS becomes necessary, you will loose everything in your users /home directory. If you have a current backup of the users /home directory this isn't an issue. But many unfortunate souls don't have backups at all, or what they do have is outdated.

[Chopstick]

That's the only argument I have ever heard, but since I do have fairly frequent backups, that is not a huge issue. Also, should you mess up your system so badly that you have to reinstall the OS, you can still mount your hard drive on a different system (or from a thumb drive) and back up your home folder this way. It's a bit more hassle, but I've never messed up my system so badly in all the 5.5 years I have been using Linux now, so the risk seems fairly low to me.
The thing that I do mess up sometimes is KDE, but that's in my home anyway and it is easy to recover.
(In this context, I highly recommend installing a light-weight window manager like IceWM in case you seriously break something in your KDE installation and need a browser to google for help or post in this forum.)

[Snowhog]

For you, with your knowledge/understanding of how Linux works, using a single partition presents no problems that you can't deal with should they arise. This is a good thing. Unfortunately, many who have just made the move to Linux from Windows don't. And worse, they don't seem to have the patience to develop the knowledge/understanding that will enable them to deal with issues as they arise. It's these people for whom the advice of using at least two separate partitions is geared towards.

I've been using Kubuntu since 2007. I'm rather better than just comfortable with it, but I am in no way an expert, and don't think I ever will be. I use three partitions; root, /home, and swap. It's been my habit, and for me, it's what I stick to.

The beauty of Linux is that, like Burger King, you can have it your way.

[Chopstick]

I'm not sure if I like the Burger King comparison (I'm not particularly fond of Burger franchises), but I agree that for new users it is probably good advice.

[DoYouKubuntu]

could you please tell me your experience with putting Kubuntu on this ,,,,,,,,, I am at the moment thinking of geting one of system 76's systems .
wanted to know if things like the cool back lite key board was easy to get working in Kubuntu

I forgot to address this: The beautiful, backlit keyboard works great in Kubuntu.

[DoYouKubuntu]

A Linux specialist who installs on a single partition

Are you referring to System76?

[eggbert]

That's the only argument I have ever heard, but since I do have fairly frequent backups, that is not a huge issue. Also, should you mess up your system so badly that you have to reinstall the OS, you can still mount your hard drive on a different system (or from a thumb drive) and back up your home folder this way. It's a bit more hassle, but I've never messed up my system so badly in all the 5.5 years I have been using Linux now, so the risk seems fairly low to me.

I agree with using a single partition. The disadvantages of having multiple partitions outweigh any supposed benefits. If you're going to make a separate partition for /home, you better make darn sure you properly estimate the size of / or /tmp or /var as these can grow over time. And even then, you never really know what's going to go in /tmp. Is the partition going to be big enough? So you either have to have a huge / partition that's a waste of disk space, or make some very careful estimates.

It's far better IMHO to just have a proper backup strategy for your /home directory (which you should have either way) and have a single / partition.

[GreyGeek]

I am a single partition user also.

One question my clients frequently asked was "How often should I back up?" My answer was "How much are you willing to re-enter after you lose it?".

Besides application bugs/failures a big cause of data loss is hardware failure. I was writing a GPS tracking truck tracking/inventory system control software (in VisualBasic at the time) for a major trucking company. They were running their payroll system on a pair of mirrored and striped drives on an IBM System 400. It turned out that BOTH HDs were powered by a single powers supply and when it died both the the HDs died. It took more than a week to bring their payroll system back up.

In some situations data retention involves tactics like backing up during noon lunch and after work. Other solutions involved writing the transaction (data) simultaneously to two separate HDs, i.e., redundancy. I often designed software to do that. Stripping and mirroring the HDs is also used.

Having a filesystem that allows removing bad HDs and inserting new replacements without stopping the system or loosing data is a huge leap forward. That's why I use the btrfs filesystem. I have experimented with adding four or five 16GB USB sticks to my btrfs fs and then randomly yanking one of them out of the active hub without data loss or any apparent performance penalties.

[MoonRise]

Actually Multi here and it has saved me many, many times. That is, the HD was failing and for what ever reason, it always have read my HOME partition over any of the other partitions. Maybe it is where I generally layout the partition? Don't know but I truly keep separate partitions to that and that alone. Actually, I've gone a step further and keep HOME on a separate drive now but I still have it spilt for other OSes I use.

[DoYouKubuntu]

I'm firmly--and for ~30 years have been--in the multiple partitions camp. And in ~30 years I have never run out of space as a lack of poor planning--only as a result of increasingly larger and larger files filling up the space I had available!

I love having separate partitions because it so simplifies the upgrading process. I rarely do the version upgrade method of upgrading, as I prefer to start fresh and do a clean install, including wiping/formatting my root partition. Although I am borderline fanatical about backing up data and, therefore, stand very little chance of ever losing anything important, I can state categorically that I've never lost one iota of data via the 'wipe and clean install' method of upgrading--because I simply don't select my data partitions for formatting.

In *MY* world, I see no reason at all to prefer a single partition over multiple. However, if that's what works best for others, more power to them. It's all about choice, right?

[vinnywright]

I highly recommend installing a light-weight window manager like IceWM in case you seriously break something in your KDE installation and need a browser to google for help or post in this forum.)

I'll +1 that ,,,,,,,I install "fluxbox" for this .

VINNY

[vinnywright]

It's all about choice, right?

,,,,yup.

I was firmly in the (at least 3 /, ~/,swap)install partitions.

but now I do a everything(but swap) in / install to a 30GB / partition then immediately link all my ~/ directory’s (just the standard)Music.Documents,Downloads,Videos,ect,ect) to their counterparts in a mounted at boot storage partition.


VINNY

[vinnywright]

Yes, at least that's how I read the post, System 76 put all in a single partition.

ya I think I read that some where as well.

I did also read that a "restore" to a factory system consists of , you, making a Ubuntu-14.04 install then adding their PPA and installing the "driver" package .
I now wander if the "driver" package would work with Kubuntu install..............the gears turn and turn......

at the vary least it should be relatively easy to shrink the install partition,, make a new one,, install Kubuntu and try ,,,,,,,,,,right? + it will half to have a extra storage drive if I get it any way ,,,,,,,,so the extra installs can go to that if nothing elce.................the gears turn and turn ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

VINNY

[DoYouKubuntu]

Yes, at least that's how I read the post, System 76 put all in a single partition.

Yes, that's correct. But someone else thought you were talking about them, not System76.