default partition scheme without /home - why ?

[James Hubbard]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 10:36 AM, Yaakov Nemoy <loupgaroublond at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 8:30 AM, James Hubbard <jameshubbard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  I used to do that for my desktop and laptop.  Those that really need a
>  >  separate /usr and /var already know who they are, what they need, and
>  >  how to set those up.  I don't believe that the default needs to set
>  >  those up.
>  >
>  >  For most desktop users especially new ones that need just the regular
>  >  setup, it's probably not important.  I've been recommending to our
>  >  sysadmins and users setting up their own system, to use a separate /
>  >  and /home partition for about 3 years now. I usually just tell them to
>  >  give 10-15GB of space to /.
>  >
>  >  As others have mentioned, it makes a re-install with a format of /
>  >  easy to do.  On my own system, I'm just using 5.6GB of the 15GB that
>  >  I've set aside for /.  I move data that's not important to keep in
>  >  home over there whenever home starts getting full.
>
>  Doing Smolt devel work ordinarily doesn't take alot of space.
>  Uncompresesd though, working with a copy of the production data can
>  take over 10GB in /var alone.  Ideally, I should be mounting /var
>  somewhere different too.  If I had a desktop, I would probably have a
>  small but fast HD dedicated to it, but I prefer laptops.
>

Since you're working 10GB of data in var should the default minimum
size of / be at 25GB? You might need 2 copies of uncompressed data
right?

>  >  Just the fact that there are so many emails and differing ideas about
>  >  what a / and /home default partitioning  means that whatever is chosen
>  >  probably won't make everyone happy.  As the novice moves to a more
>  >  intermediate level, they'll figure out what they need or want and do
>  >  it themselves.  Those that don't care to know more will probably be
>  >  happy with single / partition.
>  >
>
>  An ordinary user isn't necessarily Aunt Tillie and her Amazing Flea
>  Circus, but rather some with his or her unique needs.  There are a
>  million people coming from Windows who were told that Linux is better
>  for Java or Ruby development.  They come for the Compiz and stay for
>  the LAMP.  They may try convincing coworkers to use Fedora as well.
>  These people are technical minded, but don't have the time to futz
>  around with partitions either.  I think before Fedora is ready to
>  conquer the home market, we need to be able to conquer the power user
>  who has very little extra time on his hands.

Okay, I'm sorry I probably shouldn't have used ordinary here. It's a
loaded term and I don't really know what the ordinary user is.  Does
someone?  So by the definition above Aunt Tillie isn't unique and
unique is ordinary?

What user is the default partition layout option targeting?  (Perhaps
I missed or have forgotten that it was said in the other 80 messages.)
 If Fedora is targeting the millions of Windows user switching to some
linux distribution, shouldn't it be left as a single partition?  Every
windows box you get typically has one big partition for the OS and
user data.  There is a hidden recovery partiton on many of those boxes
as well.  Many of those users barely know what a hard drive.  I doubt
that 75% of those even know what a partition is. I would guess that
many of the so called windows "power users" will even know what a
partition is.  (How do you define a "power user" is in this instance?)

As other people have mentioned before, I doubt that it's possible to
come up with a good default layout rule that will make everyone happy.