HowTo: Partitioning Basics

[bodhi.zazen]

Very well done--thank you.

It would be nice to add a quick explanation of the file system types (ext2, ext3, jfs, xfs, etc.) and/or links to detailed references, along with a brief explanation of the features/advantages/benefits of each.

You are most welcome. Here is a link re: file systems :

http://www.linux.com/feature/31939

http://wiki.novell.com/index.php/Fil...tem_Comparison

Wikipedia also has a nice overview :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReiserFS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiser4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFS_file_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFS

You will get a lot of opinions regarding file systems.

IMO / In my experience : Outside of benchmarking I do not see a noticeable performance difference between the file systems on a day-to-day general use desktop.

In selecting a file system, keep in mind reliability - what happens if things go wrong, any additional options, and compatibility (between operating systems). Just be careful when you read the "benchmarks" as they are certainly not the full story.

If you use XFS on your root system, grub can not boot xfs, so you need to either use lilo or set up a (ext2) boot partition.

Personally I use ext3 as IMO it is the most reliable / stable (although I am sure not everyone would agree, as you can see in the comments in some of those links). You should do just fine with ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, or Ext3 (these 4 are all quite solid and reliable IMO). Reiser4 and ext4 are up and coming, I do not have any direct experience with either.

[egalvan]

Why can I not see the 'THANK YOU" tags on this thread?
This occasionally happens, haven't seen a pattern to the disappearance yet.

Anyway,
A big THANK YOU for this thread.
Most useful.

An off-line edition would be ever so useful, such as a .pdf type.

[bodhi.zazen]

Why can I not see the 'THANK YOU" tags on this thread?
This occasionally happens, haven't seen a pattern to the disappearance yet.

Anyway,
A big THANK YOU for this thread.
Most useful.

An off-line edition would be ever so useful, such as a .pdf type.

This is an old thread, from the time before the "thanks" button.

Thank you for your reply though, that took longer then hitting a button.

[dvdragon]

Thank you for this amazing guide. It gives novices and experts what they need.

[imjscn]

Thanks for the great Guide! I followed this guide and successfully installed Xubuntu. Now I wish to view the Partition Table to see if everything is alright. but in my Application/System menue, there isn't an "Administrator" entry. Where else I can find this entry? or, is there another way to view the Partition Table in Xubuntu?

[bodhi.zazen]

The two methods are to use the command line (terminal) and gparted.

gparted is on the live CD but is not installed (you can install it if you wish).

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoftwareManagement

Open a terminal and type :

sudo fdisk -l

[imjscn]

thanks! fdisk-l shows all the patitions but not mount point. I wish to see both mount points and patitions, is there a way?

[ssican]

imjscn, GParted 0.3.5 show partitions and mount points.
Install GParted, or make use of GParted on LiveCD.
On Ubuntu 8.04 GParted is at: System > Administration > Partition Editor(GParted).
On Xubuntu 8.04 GParted is at: Applications > System > Partition Editor.

[bodhi.zazen]

thanks! fdisk-l shows all the patitions but not mount point. I wish to see both mount points and patitions, is there a way?

You can issue the mount command :

mount

Or

less /etc/fstab

[Blackbeard1313]

Just wanted to say Thank You for this excellent post! I just tried out Linux for the first time about 5 days ago and Windows is now very lonely as I haven't used it since. This will be a big help as I am now going to replace Windows with Ubuntu.