Time to reinstall, please recommend distro and partitioning scheme.

[WillSo40]

Hi,
I was using Fedora, but managed to bork it. I plan to backup useful data from my profile and reinstall.
1. Not sure which distro should I use, right now Arch most likely. I want this distro to be up to date, but still stable. Most importantly I'm sick of reinstalling Linux every single year. Due to my own, or maintainers error.
I want it to have something similar to timeshift snapshots. I will use Gnome or Cinnamon, may be KDE.
My main use for this Linux is browsing, banking, emails, budgeting software, some python, c#, bash scripting, run a few VMware virtual machines, I will also play a few single player games.
I'll use this in dual boot machine with Windows 11.

Hardware: Ryzen 5600x 6 core CPU, 32 GB ddr4 RAM, AMD Radeon 6700xt GPU, 500 GB nvme SSD dedicated to Linux, 1 TB nvme SSD dedicated to Windows 11, a couple of 6 tb SATA HDD's (NTFS formatted) drives for data, shared between all OS'es.

2. Second part of this question: what partition scheme should I use. I would like btrfs for my system partition, with the ability to use snapshots, and may be ext4 /home partition. What size should they be for my 500 GB SSD? I will not use encryption or compression. I'm planning to use ReFIND for main bootloader, and grub or systemd for Linux.

Any insights?
I'm not a complete noob, but surely not an expert, as I cannot keep my Linux installation working for more than a year.

 

[f33dm3bits]

I want it to have something similar to timeshift snapshots. I will use Gnome or Cinnamon, may be KDE.

Use one of the Fedora Atomic Spins: Gnome or KDE Plasma, Atomic distributions are image based and have a functionality built in that you can boot from a previous image. With each update you get a new image and you can choose to boot from previous ones in the Grub boot menu.

Fedora Atomic Desktops | The Fedora Project

fedoraproject.org

 

[MikeWalsh]

TBH, I can't see where you're going wrong.

I have 'Puppy' Linux installs that have been going for several years. If anything, the longer they're in use, the more stable they seem to become.....and believe me, I modify the hell out of my Puppies, and experiment with all sorts of stuff.

If you easily 'bork' things, perhaps what you need is one of these "immutable" distros:-

12 Future-Proof Immutable Linux Distributions

Immutability is a concept in trend. Take a look at what are the options you have for an immutable Linux distribution.

itsfoss.com

The core part of the system - that everything else relies upon - is "read-only".....meaning that you can try your hardest to 'mess it up', and it'll just shrug your attempts off, and keep booting & working. Because try as you might, you cannot touch it. It won't let you.

You can add software packages, and run stuff on top of it, sure. But you can't modify the system itself....

This is also the way that Puppy Linux works.

I don't know if this is the same kind of thing that Maarten ( @f33dm3bits ) was talking about..?


Mike.

 

[f33dm3bits]

I don't know if this is the same kind of thing that Maarten ( @f33dm3bits ) was talking about..?

Atomic/Immutable distributions are are image based, when you get an update a new image is installed and several are kept as a backup which you can choose to boot from in the Grub boot menu if one fails to boot. No no need to have to setup Timeshift yourself, I find that similar to what OP described.

I want it to have something similar to timeshift snapshots.

As for ease of use you can install and update from the software store for graphical applications Flatpaks are used. I use Silverblue myself and I recently found a way of being able to install most other command-line tools without having to layer them, but I won't get into that here now since it doesn't sound like OP is the type of user that will be using those a lot.

The core part of the system - that everything else relies upon - is "read-only".....meaning that you can try your hardest to 'mess it up', and it'll just shrug your attempts off, and keep booting & working.

Correct! And something can only successfully install/update or fail to install update so you can't get a half updated system that won't boot. And as mentioned in my first part of this reply if an image fails to boot you can choose a previous image to boot from in the Grub menu during boot.

 

[kc1di]

Jesse Smith had a good write up on last weeks Distrowatch weekly. scroll down to the "Questions & Answers" section.

DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

News and feature lists of Linux and BSD distributions.

distrowatch.com

 

[APTI]

I have been using fedora since F16 and some systems upgraded as far as 40. never had the issues you speak of. Surely never had to reinstall due to issues. I do far more than you do on it. I do virtual machines, software development and more. I have a couple scripts written to do updates and upgrades. I would share them with you if you think it will help alleviate your problems and stop having to do total reinstall. You should never have to do that.

I also do not put in the latest version. since F41 is out now I am just upgrading everything to F40. I stay one version behind for obvious reasons I would think. If you need the scripts just ask. But I would stick to Fedora 40 and use the default partitioning. Never had issues nor do any of my clients.

 

[Egzoset]

My NoteBook's NVMe storage is 512 GB too. Initially i chose to be "polite" with Win11 and prepare all future free space starting from there, 1st to turn BitLocker off then to manage partitions. Basically i thought i'd have five 60 GB ext4 partitions where to install many Linux spins for evaluation plus two ESPs, one for the usual GrUB2 Linux-shared setup and a completely independent one for rEFInd. After a while i wanted even more Linux fun so it became necessary to sub-divide as 28 GB partitions, which filled up much faster after a while though. Besides, i later decided to also dedicate one of those 28 GB chunks to inter-platform storage as an exFAT partition which Win11 would be able to access, but in the end i only keep it there because on the manufacturer's support (as FirmWare), yet in fact i rarely launch it at all and do nothing with it except time-consuming updates when i find nothing better to do... 40 GB partitions will let you try 7 Linux spins simultaneously with individual ESPs for each of them (to make sure Windows can't break GrUB), 6 if one is dedicated to multi-platform storage as exFAT, for exemple. Then after a few months of evaluation it's still going to be possible to reclaim space from the unwated stuff.

Another resource i found most valuable for this sort of fun adventure was YUMi-exFAT as each .ISO only needs to be copied instead of "etched", which saves a lot of time and also filters out candidates with flaky handling of GrUB install procedures IMO.

 

[APTI]

My NoteBook's NVMe storage is 512 GB too. Initially i chose to be "polite" with Win11 and prepare all future free space starting from there, 1st to turn BitLocker off then to manage partitions. Basically i thought i'd have five 60 GB ext4 partitions where to install many Linux spins for evaluation plus two ESPs, one for the usual GrUB2 Linux-shared setup and a completely independent one for rEFInd. After a while i wanted even more Linux fun so it became necessary to sub-divide as 28 GB partitions, which filled up much faster after a while though. Besides, i later decided to also dedicate one of those 28 GB chunks to inter-platform storage as an exFAT partition which Win11 would be able to access, but in the end i only keep it there because on the manufacturer's support (as FirmWare), yet in fact i rarely launch it at all and do nothing with it except time-consuming updates when i find nothing better to do... 40 GB partitions will let you try 7 Linux spins simultaneously with individual ESPs for each of them, 6 if one is dedicated to multi-platform storage as exFAT, for exemple. Then after a few months of evaluation it's still going to be possible to reclaim space from the unwated stuff.

Another resource i found most valuable for this sort of fun adventure was YUMi-exFAT as each .ISO only needs to be copied instead of "etched", which saves a lot of time and also filters out candidates with flaky handling of GrUB install procedures IMO.

be careful with windows updates especially firmware. I have 2 computers (not anymore) that had windows and linux. both did firmware updates from windows. one now no longer has acpi control so can't power itself off in linux. The other bricked the computer and nothing runs on it now, except maybe mice as it is in the electronics recycle pile.
Many windoze updates seem to damage linux installs.

Also great job removing bitlocker. That is a useless piece of software that lures many into a quagmire of problems while falsely promising better security. encrypted drive prevents most attempts to fix things when windoze fails. It won't stop a hacker, it only helps if the hard drive is stolen and somebody attempts to access it, otherwise bitlocker is all hype that doesn't help anybody.

 

[WillSo40]

Just noticed I have lots of replies. This was my first post here, so it had to be approved by moderators.
I got impatient and plunged to install arch. And that's the reason I didn't notice all the responses here. Sorry guy's.

Now I think that installing an immutable distro would have been a better way to go. I've never tried to use one.

As for borking my fedora system - last time I did something with mixing 32 and 64 bit packages using multilib. Not really sure what went wrong, after update systemd started showing loads of errors on boot, and I couldn't get past GDM.

For Arch this time I'm using separate partitions for root (128 GB btrfs) and home (the rest, ext4). Still have to setup snapshots for my root partition.

Thanks for the help, will try Fedora silverblue if/when arch fails.

 

[Egzoset]

...careful with windows updates especially firmware. ... The other bricked...

Lets correctly address this warning to the original poster, firmware update failures ain't to be blamed systematically on Microsoft anyway, except if/when it proceeds without prior user authorisation and yet i'd think of the manufacturer's own choice of BIOS/UEFI 1st... Like when there's 2 of them and yet it still goes so wrong one gets a "brick" somehow, and that's not about Windows but hardware design.

 

[Brickwizard]

Just noticed I have lots of replies. This was my first post here,

Welcome
you must remember we are an international site with members scattered across all continents/time zones, also we are not paid we all volunteer what time we can spare, so it could take a few days to get a comprehensive reply,
Windows updates can break your Linux installation or to be more accurate break the grub installer, it is renowned for this, but there are reasonably easy fixes,
as you have been using Fedora I suggest you stick with it [or one of the re-spin distributions] unless you are unhappy, if you are then there are far more Debian based distributions to try

 

[Egzoset]

P.S.:

Do not allow Linux to touch any partition which belongs to Windows when UEFi is available, period.

 

[kc1di]

Hello @WillSo40
Welcome to the linux.org forum, enjoy the journey!
When you take a breath from all the good answers you have received you may want to take a look at this page

Home | Linux Journey

linuxjourney.com

It's a good page for leaning Linux in small bites.
Basically you will need to determine what your goals are do you want Cutting edge packages that may from time to time break your system or stable with older packages that just work. The one thing great about Linux is it's your Choice. enjoy!

 

[APTI]

Lets correctly address this warning to the original poster, firmware update failures ain't to be blamed systematically on Microsoft anyway, except if/when it proceeds without prior user authorisation and yet i'd think of the manufacturer's own choice of BIOS/UEFI 1st... Like when there's 2 of them and yet it still goes so wrong one gets a "brick" somehow, and that's not about Windows but hardware design.

actually the bios update was in both cases explicitly told to NOT INSTALL, yet windows did it anyway. So yes I will blame microsoft for not doing what I said, or more accurately doing what I specifically said not to do. so the issue was indeed microsoft and updates from them.

To address your other comment Do not allow Linux to touch any partition which belongs to Windows when UEFi is available, period.

This is not a problem unless you fail to disable fast boot in windows settings. This is found under control panel, power, then click what to do when the power button or lid is closed. Then click the link for change setting that are unavailable. Then go turn off the fast boot option.

The issues that happen in windows are because of that feature which instead of shutting down just changes your choice (once again microsoft ignoring what you tell it) and going to hibernate mode. That means any changes you make to the windows drive can break windows. This is because there is a file called hiberfil.sys that hold the last state of the PC and linux can't change that. Windows boots off of that and requires nothing be changed or else. If you disable the fast boot you will likely see faster and more reliable windows boot up and the lack of the hiberfil.sys file will allow changes to be made from linux on the windows drive or partition. You will also notice that linux will only mount the windows drive in read only mode because of that file. I edit windows drives all the time from linux without issue including UEFI.

 

[Egzoset]

Well although it's Halloween i've just allowed it to happen anyway. Win11 did list some firmware update among its pending tasks and i did get the choice to have a last-minute change of mind after rebooting caused rEFInd to load, awaiting for its timeout count to reach zero with Win11 pre-selected. I could have tried to cancel, but then i recalled acquiring this NoteBook after reading a favourable advice on April 29 which made Dell or Lenovo sound good enough for my purpose, so i picked the 1st.

Nonetheless the firmware actually came from Intel, not Microsoft nor even Dell, and if i understood it correctly that was about a « critical » bug in the NVMe storage unit... Silly me, i'm all for "improved functionality", "reliability" and "stability" that may also include "security fixes" - highly recommended by Dell Technologies. What do i know!



The battery was full and i had my A.C. adapter plugged in, yet just in case i "brick" it next time (...), in the real sense i mean, please tell me what other brand/model has your approval? Who knows, i may need a replacement even before the warranty is over. In the meantime i'd humbly suggest a dedicated thread about firmware reliability is started right away as i find the word "critical" stressful already and i'm confident not to be alone to wonder what else needs to be told BEFORE buying.

 

[APTI]

Well although it's Halloween i've just allowed it to happen anyway. Win11 did list some firmware update among its pending tasks and i did get the choice to have a last-minute change of mind after rebooting caused rEFInd to load, awaiting for its timeout count to reach zero with Win11 pre-selected. I could have tried to cancel, but then i recalled acquiring this NoteBook after reading a favourable advice on April 29 which made Dell or Lenovo sound good enough for my purpose, so i picked the 1st.

Nonetheless the firmware actually came from Intel, not Microsoft nor even Dell, and if i understood it correctly that was about a « critical » bug in the NVMe storage unit... Silly me, i'm all for "improved functionality", "reliability" and "stability" that may also include "security fixes" - highly recommended by Dell Technologies. What do i know!



The battery was full and i had my A.C. adapter plugged in, yet just in case i "brick" it next time (...), in the real sense i mean, please tell me what other brand/model has your approval? Who knows, i may need a replacement even before the warranty is over. In the meantime i'd humbly suggest a dedicated thread about firmware reliability is started right away as i find the word "critical" stressful already and i'm confident not to be alone to wonder what else needs to be told BEFORE buying.

I figure my firmware updates this way... If it ain't broke, don't fix it. so if I am not having an issue I leave it alone. I don't like throwing computers into recycle because they got bricked. If I have a problem I will load a firmware update otherwise I avoid them. usually firmware updates are benign and no issue but the few times they are not, they cause disaster.

 

[MikeWalsh]

Yah. Largely, I will agree with @APTI ; if stuff works, leave the firmware alone.

In the Puppy community, we have a couple of guys who are experts at putting together firmware packages for individual items; mostly, these consist of networking "issues".....usually, firmware 'blobs' for newer/more esoteric wi-fi hardware. These are the one item that CAN give issues; more often than not, the kernel will have the drivers for the wi-fi module in question, but due to the specific module still being pretty new, not everything will have percolated through to where it needs to be......and some wi-fi hardware manufacturers are NOT forthcoming with the necessary support information where Linux is concerned (I'm looking at YOU, Realtek).

So, these guys have become expert at digging up source code wherever it can be found, and they'll compile it for whatever kernel is in use. Generally, they do a damn fine job, and the rest of us in the community are extremely grateful for what they do..!

@Egzoset :-

Nonetheless the firmware actually came from Intel, not Microsoft nor even Dell, and if i understood it correctly that was about a « critical » bug in the NVMe storage unit...

That's understandable. You've got to remember; Intel build the actual hardware. Microsoft are a software company (the clue's in the name!), and even Dell only actually assemble items of hardware already built by other people into a fully-functional system. So in this particular case, if anybody's going to know what firmware is needed by the hardware that they themselves have built, it's going to be.....Intel.

The firmware will eventually filter through to the repos, but you can usually bank on it being 3, perhaps 4 major kernel revisions before the kernel team are completely happy that all the bugs are out of it & it's fit for general release.

Make sense?


Mike.

 

[Egzoset]

Make sense?

What makes sense is that i'm being told i've put money on a time-bomb without saying it. Yet my previous suggestion stands, considering the catastrophic consequences it seems to me we desperately need some sticky where harakiri brands/models should be listed, starting with APTI's non-disclosed dead machine. The other observation stands too, having rEFInd installed on an ESP of its own DID allow me to choose, just saying...

 

[WillSo40]

Welcome
you must remember we are an international site with members scattered across all continents/time zones, also we are not paid we all volunteer what time we can spare, so it could take a few days to get a comprehensive reply,
Windows updates can break your Linux installation or to be more accurate break the grub installer, it is renowned for this, but there are reasonably easy fixes,
as you have been using Fedora I suggest you stick with it [or one of the re-spin distributions] unless you are unhappy, if you are then there are far more Debian based distributions to try

Thank you for support, I appreciate all the help I get.
Just a rant, I've decided to try one of Fedora spins "Bazzite", as it was based on atomic version of Fedora. It didn't hold for 24 hours, I managed to bork it. I really needed Samba on it, so just tried to follow some random guide on overlaying packages. After that both boot options failed to boot.
It's worse for me, I'm at the stage in Linux, where I think I know a little, but in reality - just enough to break things and not enough to fix them (on the top of mount Stupid).

 

[KGIII]

I think I know a little, but in reality - just enough to break things and not enough to fix them (on the top of mount Stupid).

I call that 'learning by breaking' and it's a perfectly valid way, if a bit troublesome, to learn to properly use Linux. You can learn a lot by breaking things.