LINUX Install

[Zygomorphic]

Hello again, everyone. It seems that we haven't discussed LINUX here in a while. I thought it is about time to change that, since summer is here, and I am nearly done rebuilding my laptop. Considering what I said above, I figured I would go ahead and share my experiences with the system.

I had mentioned previously that I was planning on putting Windows in a VM, and going Penguin all the way. :)Well, my friends, that has happened, and I am running LINUX Mint 14 on my Seagate Hybrid drive (15 sec boot time :)). I have Windows 7 in a VM now, and it seems happy there, and is easier to manage than Windows on a drive with LINUX. I have to say, getting rid of Windows made things easier, since only Windows doesn't respect other people's bootloaders, and is arrogant enough to think that it is the only OS you want. :mad:

I did some research on the best partitioning scheme for LINUX, and which filesystems to use for which partitions, and so this is the partitioning scheme that I chose, given that I am planning on having multiple VMs on this machine, so the maximum storage is ideal.
/dev/sdb2 /boot 255 MB ext2
/dev/sdb3 Extended partition
/dev/sdb6 / 50 GB ext4
/dev/sdb7 /home 418 GB ext4
/dev/sdb5 swap 32 GB swap

I have 16 GB of RAM, and so went with the rule-of-thumb 1.5-2x RAM for swap space. I don't tend to hibernate my system, but if I ever do, I want the option of doing so. I could probably have gone with 16 GB, and if I were more pressed for space, I would have.

I've heard that some suggest splitting /boot and the / partitions, so I decided that it can't hurt, and it can keep some of my other stuff separate. If you guys don't think that this is necessary, I'd like to know that for the future.

I'm a firm believer in separating the /home partition from everything else, especially since I sometimes change LINUX distros, and this allows me to preserve all my files. 🙂 For someone who just wants to try LINUX out, I go with the simple partitioning scheme of (/ and swap), but since I use LINUX for my daily tasks, I wanted a better system.

TODO:
* Install nVidia drivers to obtain better graphics performance and power management.
* Download LINUX kernel sources and learn more about building LINUX kernels.
* Try out other distros and configs in VM - more learning.
* Upgrade to LINUX Mint 15 when it comes out.

Any thoughts and/or suggestions? I'm happy to have feedback, and would like people's thoughts. I'm particularly interested in starting a flame war about distros, as well as filesystems. :cool:

[Nodens]

Great news Zygomorphic! That's a nice way to tap into the full performance of a netbook:)

[Zygomorphic]

Nodens wrote:
Great news Zygomorphic! That's a nice way to tap into the full performance of a netbook:)

Yes, with a light distro of Ubuntu (Lubuntu or Xubuntu, take your pick), that could be a pretty sweet system. I don't care for Unity much, but its better than GNOME 3, and Ubuntu isn't too bad on RAM usage ~500 MB.

[billyray520]

My Acer netbook has the full Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with Unity and is operating very well. I have upgraded it to 2 GB of RAM. I think modern netbooks (Like the Asus one) can run full Ubuntu versions no problem.

I hope more vendors come out with Ubuntu (or Linux) netbooks. It's perfect for them!

[SlackROG]

I'm a hardcore Linux Geek so I know the deal! 🙂

1. I've never made seperate partitions but that's me, / & swap is all I've ever done, so you don't really need it, It depends on what you want... But yes jumping around between distros and having a /home partition to keep things perserved might come in handy. So actually all you really need is just / & /home, two partitions.

2. With 16GB of ram you don't need swap

3. It seems like you're just starting out in Linux so I'd suggest checking out http://distrowatch.com and pick a distro you like.

4. For starting out I'd recommend Mint or Ubuntu

The only way you're going to learn is just start diving in there and going for it and when you need some help in real time join the Freenode IRC server, it's the biggest Open Source IRC server for most distros, Mint uses their own.

Cheers

[Zygomorphic]

SlackROG wrote:
I'm a hardcore Linux Geek so I know the deal! 🙂

1. I've never made seperate partitions but that's me, / & swap is all I've ever done, so you don't really need it, It depends on what you want... But yes jumping around between distros and having a /home partition to keep things perserved might come in handy. So actually all you really need is just / & /home, two partitions.

2. With 16GB of ram you don't need swap

3. It seems like you're just starting out in Linux so I'd suggest checking out http://distrowatch.com and pick a distro you like.

4. For starting out I'd recommend Mint or Ubuntu

The only way you're going to learn is just start diving in there and going for it and when you need some help in real time join the Freenode IRC server, it's the biggest Open Source IRC server for most distros, Mint uses their own.

Cheers

Welcome to the LINUX+ROG fold! 🙂 Mating the best software with the best hardware...:cool:

Yeah, if you don't reinstall distros very often, getting rid of the /home partition doesn't make much difference - it is up to user preferences. However, I reinstall/install distros often enough that having a coherent /home partition is very beneficial.

I have debated on removing swap, but occasionally I do stuff that will saturate my 16 GB of RAM, so having that swap space can actually prevent a program from crashing. I'm aware of how slow it can be, but if space-hogging programs that aren't very active are paged out, you'll be okay.

[SlackROG]

Myk SilentShadow wrote:
Zygomorphic is not a n00b when it comes to Linux

Glad to hear! 😉

Oh I also didn't mean that as any disrespect to anyone since I'm new around here, I was only pointing out that I'm a Linux geek is all hehe...

Cheers

Zygomorphic wrote:
Welcome to the LINUX+ROG fold! 🙂 Mating the best software with the best hardware...:cool:

Yeah, if you don't reinstall distros very often, getting rid of the /home partition doesn't make much difference - it is up to user preferences. However, I reinstall/install distros often enough that having a coherent /home partition is very beneficial.

I have debated on removing swap, but occasionally I do stuff that will saturate my 16 GB of RAM, so having that swap space can actually prevent a program from crashing. I'm aware of how slow it can be, but if space-hogging programs that aren't very active are paged out, you'll be okay.

Thanks for the Welcome, hehe mating, we certainly could use some more of that with Asus & Tux! 🙂

Sheesh what are you doing that you're sucking up 16 GB of Ram?

Let's see now, I could be running a video in full screen on VLC, surfing in Firefox, playing music, playing a game in Steam, plus a VM running Windows, and I still wouldn't be using up 16GB hehe...

What distro and DE are you running?

One good reason I'd recommend swap is for anyone that might want to use VMWare Workstation...

Cheers

[Myk_SilentShado]

Zygomorphic is not a n00b when it comes to Linux

[powerhouse]

Zygomorphic wrote:
...Any thoughts and/or suggestions? I'm happy to have feedback, and would like people's thoughts. I'm particularly interested in starting a flame war about distros, as well as filesystems. :cool:

Sorry for being a latecomer to this show. So here is my 7 cent:

1. /boot partition ext2
2. All the rest LVM with separate / and /home, both ext4, and unformatted LVs for your VMs (see below) - leave empty space so you can extend either / or /home, or make more space available to your VMs when needed. All LVs should be in the same VG (read on LVM if this is unfamiliar).
3. As Nodens suggested, install Xen (or KVM), use a second graphics card, and install your Windows VM with its own physical graphics card using VGA passthrough for bare metal performance.
4. Doing the above, you will NEVER ever have to dual boot:D. My Windows VM runs better on the Xen hypervisor than it would on bare metal, and I got the benchmarks to proof it - see http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=225&t=153482.
5. Backing up my Windows VM (70GB volume) to a compressed file or restoring it takes ~6 minutes. I keep a "golden image" plus some sequential backups just in case Windows goes sour, or when I test new software and want to completely rid myself of it.

If you need instructions for getting Xen and VGA passthrough work on Linux Mint, see http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=112013.

[Nodens]

LVM is nice for messing up with volume sizes etc but I would not really suggest it to a Linux newbie as it can easily get complicated in case of any recovery procedures.

My favorite setup for Xen is this:

OS on SSD, with just /, /home (both ext4--no separate /boot partition) and swap if needed.

Then additional mechanical drives or SSDs either directly passed to the VMs, or big mechanical drive on LVM just for VM usage.

If you want go a bit overboard get an LSI RAID HBA. 3xSSD RAID5 with some space left for RAID0 Cachecade array (eg 80GB), 3xHDD Large drives on another RAID 5 array.

OS on SSD RAID5 array (root, /home, swap). Mechanical RAID5 array with LVM, used for storage and VMs. Mechanical RAID5array cached via Cachecade on the 3xSSD RAID0 array.

And you got everything. Super speed, flexibility, redundancy.

[Zygomorphic]

Me, I feel like a moron...Thanks @Nodens! 🙂 Actually, I've played with Xen before, never got it running right, so I may have to try it again, just to see if I can get it working, since it looks like such a great idea. However, I'm on a laptop, so it may not be so useful. The other thing I may have to play with is LINUX on my Android phone...