separate /home by default

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 03:02:54PM +0000, Henry Baldursson wrote:

>  Not quite related, but yet somewhat so.
> 
>  What about using swap files instead of the more permanent measure of
> reserving partition space for swap?
> 
> According to Dave Jones' post-halloween document, swap files should be
> just as fast as swap partitions in 2.6.x.
> 
>  http://zenii.linux.org.uk/~davej/docs/post-halloween-2.6.txt

Others have referred to this statement as well, but I do not think that it
is as simple as it sounds.  See my earlier mail on the subject (some months
ago).

>  Just a thought. Since it gives the user more freedom in future
> configurations, such as that just because he has 1gb ram doesn't mean
> he'll need 2gb of swap "just because the old linux installation manual
> I read said swap=ram*2".

We select a reasonable amount of swap automatically; so this shouldn't be a
problem.

>  Also, tmpfs for /tmp is a valid consideration. Many times I have had some
>  integral component of Gnome crash after a apt-get dist-upgrade in Hoary,
>  and then rebooted and found that all my menubar items were missing along
>  with my icons and stuff, so I was left with two bars with a show desktop
>  button on there and nothing else, and had to remove some dot directories
>  from /tmp to clear the mess up. Plus tmpfs should be faster than disk
>  access.

/tmp is cleaned at boot, regardless of whether it is on a tmpfs.  The only
reason to use tmpfs is performance.

>  My reason for this preference is that I opted for a fast harddrive
> for /, got the WDC Raptor which has 10000rpms and 5.2ms seek times,
> but only 37giga of space.
> 
>  I guess I fall into the "idiot" slot cause I want single partitions
> for my disks and just more disks. Oh and in case you're wondering, no
> I don't have a /boot partition.

We offer manual partitioning as an option for specialized configurations;
the default should remain as simple as possible (but no simpler).

-- 
 - mdz