Partitioning a Drive for Linux
When setting up a new Linux installing on a clean machine for personal use, partitioning the drive can be a very useful way of future-proofing yourself against updates to the operating system. In particular, it is wise to separate the operating system from your home folder–in this way, you can reinstall the OS without losing user files.
Suppose sda is a 256 GB disk. I would recommend partitioning it as follows:
| partition | mountpoint | size |
|---|---|---|
| sda1 | / | 40 GB |
| sda2 | /home | 200 GB |
| sda3 | swap | 16 GB |
The sizes are approximate and depend on what you expect your needs to be, particularly with respect to swap.
With an installation like this, one could format sda1 and install a new operating system, keeping the mount point /home on sda2. I’ve done this many times, never worried about losing my files when upgrading or wiping an OS.