Calamares automatic or manual partitioning

Support
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1

I have been looking at the Calamares guide, and, wrt partitioning, it says the automated options are:
“1. Shrink an existing partition and install alongside any other OS already available on your system, using a filesystem selected as default by your distribution.
2. Choose an existing partition to be replaced with a new installation using the same filesystem type already present on the partition.
3. Use the entire disk and will create one partition where all will be installed under root, all other partitions will be removed and the filesystem used will be the default set by your distribution.”

In my case, I have 3 partitions, a small 200MB EFI partition, a 395 GB NTFS partition (that currently has Win 10 on it), and a smaller 70GB partition on which I have stored some docs, phots, music, etc.

I don’t want a dual boot system, I just want to install OML Rock 6 on the 395GB partition, but is seems that I would need to use the manual partition function of Calamares to make it an ext4 partition.
Is this correct?

Also:
“Once the partition table is set, you need to partition the drive, minimum needed, one partition for / (root). There are some advantages to using a separate partition for /home, and you might like to have a swap partition for sleep/hibernate.”
I figure I’ll use a separate / and /home partition to make it easier to install Rock 7 when it comes out.
So, given that My Win10 install with all my SW installed is about 38GB, I figure a 40GB / partition should be much more than enough, as OML should have less bloat, so I’ll have room for more. 8.2 GB swap for hibernation. That leaves me about 347GB for my files in the /home partition.

I looked here

I want to have all my ducks in a row before doing the install, as I haven’t done this in over 15 years, and things have changed . This is my first time going into a UEFI bios, in which I set to boot sequence to start with the USB.
Did I miss anything?

2

can you recheck option UEFI

secure boot off
CSM off
fast boot off
no legacy
all disks on AHCI

boot USB live iso with UEFI < USB vendor name >

  • modifiy your country and keyboard before ( with KDE always apply )

open a kconsole

inxi -Fza 
sudo parted -l 
test -d /sys/firmware/efi & & echo UEFI || echo BIOS

you should use a format GPT partition.
if your disk is MBR , you should convert MBR to GPT with windows if possible.
DO NOT change to GPT partition , it will erase all data.

  • do not format /boot/efi partition , only add as mountpoint
  • recheck if gparted if flag boot & esp are ok for /boot/efi
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3

You will need to use Manual Partitioning to:

  1. Use the existing EFI Partition, just set the mount point to /boot/efi no need to format
  2. Set the other partitions /, /home, and swap as you wish, I recommend to use ext4 for root and /home.
  3. Set a mount point but do not format (obviously) the data or storage partition. You can set the path for that to what ever you want like /Data or /Storage or whatever.

I do not think of anything you missed but I’ll be thinking over this.

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4

I truly appreciate all the advice.
Another question:
From what I understand, Calamares runs in a live version of the OS.
Can I mess around in this live version before running Calamares, to see what, if anything, it takes to make sure all my hardware is working (particularly my dual monitors, one of which runs on a DP->VGA adapter)?

5

Yes, that is the whole purpose of the live environment. Boot into the USB and make sure all hardware works as expected, and that the environment is the one you want to use.

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6

I’m now running an installed version of Rock. Thanks to you guys, the install went as smooth as silk, and everything worked right outta the box. :grinning:
Thanks again!

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