Minimum Partition Sizing for Linux

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Gawd
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Mar 15, 2002
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Quick question, couldn't find exactly what I was looking for with search.

Anyways, I'm about to create my first dual-boot system, XP / Linux. I'm gonna put em both on my 74 GB Raptor Drive. However, I was wondering what would be a reasonable amount of size for all the Linux partitions (I'm planning on going with SuSE my first time around). I understand there needs to be a swap partition, boot, and then the main for the OS. Whats the smallest reasonable size?

I play games, so I want XP to have a pretty large chunk. Would something like 10 GB of space be enough for most general Linux apps? This is my first time, and I really have no idea what I'm going to be installing etc, but I figure I need to learn eventually.

Thanks for the help.
 
Oh, one other question. Lets say I want to install Linux later, can I just format say 60GB of the raptor, put window's on it, and just leave the rest unpartitioned until I have time to install Linux? I'd like to reformat windows tonight, and then do Linux this weekend.
 
10GB will be fine.

I've installed Fedora Core on an old Compaq computer of mine which only has 6GB total, and I still have a good bit of space to work with.

So, yeah, for general purposes, 10GB will do.

Uhh..., yeah, you can simply Format a 60GB partition for Windows XP and come back later and install Linux.
 
Yep, 10gb will probably be enough for the forseeable future. Putting Windows on first and then Linux later is the suggested order, so you're good there. Linux is better at dealing with existing OS installs than Windows is.

Enjoy your Linux experience!
 
For all my VMWare Machines 5GB suffices just fine. I have installed about every distro in order to find which one I like and most often they all take up around 2.5GB. So yeah, 10 should be just fine if you plan on using it more extensivly. For my True Linux install, I have 20 GB set to it, 5 GB as a Fat32 Windows/Linux swappity area (for moving files) and then 55 to Windows.
 
There's no real need anymore, beyond a desire to organize things or using an obscure filesystem that your bootloader can't read, to use a boot partition.

It was needed back in the day (I think P2 era, at the latest) when due to a combination of software and BIOS limitations, you were unable to boot Linux if the kernel was past a certain point on the HDD (1GB?). To prevent this from ever happening, a small partition was created at the very front of the drive that held the kernel.
 
Ah okay, so just the swap partition and the linux partition are needed? I think I will just use 10 GB for the Linux distro and have Windows on the remaining 64 GB. Thanks for the feedback.
 
As stated before, a /boot partition is typically recommended but optional. As for your root partition, basically you put your base OS and just add whatever you want for growth.

I believe most distributions are in the 2-5gb range depending on the type of install. After you decide your root partition size, you need to add a swap partition. The swap partition is typically double the size of the amount of RAM you have. If you have 1GB RAM, a 1 gig swap file is sufficient.
 
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