Novice query: Installation Help

[Liam Proven]

On 2 October 2013 18:49, AP <worldwithoutfences at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh I am getting a small idea of how really stuff works. If later (however, I
> would rather do very late), I use GParted for installing another OS, then
> after some space is allocated (via the aid of GParted), this space can be
> used as the new primary partition?

Yes, exactly.

And if you just stay with Linux, it boots happily off logical partitions.

What I have often done in the past is to take 16GB "slices" off the
end of the /home partition, put another root partition in that space
and install a 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) Linux distribution in that space.

Linux numbers primary partitions from 1 to 4, and secondary partitions
from 5 up (even if you only have 1 primary).

So for instance in the scheme I propose, the numbering will be like this:

1: Linux root
2: Extended
┕ 5: Linux home
┕ 6: Linux swap

(I am using the "┕" character to show that these are "inside" the
extended partition.)

The number goes on the end of the device name, e.g. /dev/sda

So the partitions in the example above would be named as follows:
/dev/sda1   /dev/sda2   /dev/sda5   /dev/sda6

If you started with that and added a 2nd distro, you would end up with:

1: Linux root #1
2: Extended
┕ 5: Linux home
┕ 7: Linux root #2
┕ 6: Linux swap

They are numbered in order of creation. That means if you add more
later, they will be out of sequence. This causes problems for Windows
NT 3 and NT 4, but those are both nearly 20Y 10 years old now and I
doubt you will be using them! No modern OS will be bothered by this
arrangement.

So the partitions in the example above would be named as follows:
/dev/sda1   /dev/sda2   /dev/sda5   /dev/sda6   /dev/sda7

If you plan ahead from the start for a multi-OS system, then might you
end up with something like this:

1: Windows (C:) -64GB NTFS
2: FreeBSD - 16GB
3: Solaris - 16GB
4: Extended
┕ 5: Linux #1 root - 16GB
┕ 6: Linux #2 root - 16 GB
┕ 7: Linux home 700GB
┕ 8: Windows data (D:) 200GB, FAT32
┕ 9: Windows swap (V:) 16GB
┕ 10: Linux swap 16GB

That is not a fictional, made-up example - it is what I did the last
time I installed this PC that I'm typing on. :-) (The sizes are a bit
approximate. I was using a 1TB disk.)


-- 
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