Manual partitioning
So, if you are planning on custom partitioning, you probably know what you’re doing, so I’ll make this pretty short. There are several tools you can use to manually partition your disks, depending on your preference:
- cfdisk - a simple, menu-driven tool that’s easy to navigate.
- fdisk - more barebones and command-driven, but widely available.
- parted - supports both MBR and GPT partition tables and can handle larger disks.
- gparted (GUI) - if you prefer a graphical interface, this one makes it very visual.
For example, with cfdisk, you can start it by running:
sudo cfdisk <your disk, e.g. /dev/sda or /dev/nvme0n1>
If you don’t know your disk name, you can check with lsblk.
Minimal Requirements to install
| Mountpoint | Min Size | FS |
|---|---|---|
| /boot/efi | 250 MB | FAT32 (or VFAT) |
| / | 10 GB | Linux native (ext4 or btrfs are recommended) |
Swap
Optionally you can have a swap partition.
For systems without hibernation and RAM under 2GB, use 2-3 times your RAM; for 2GB to 8GB of RAM, use RAM size; and for more than 8GB RAM, a swap size of 8GB or less, or even half RAM, is often sufficient, though memory-intensive tasks might require more.
In simple words if you have lets say 8GB of RAM installed on your machine then your swap partition size should be 8 x 1/2 which is half of 8
If you have 16 GB of RAM on your machine then your swap partition size would be 16 x 1/2 which is 8GB Here’s an example of a minimal disk setup with swap partition for 16 GB of RAM:
| Mountpoint | Min Size | FS |
|---|---|---|
| /boot/efi | 250 MB | FAT32 (or VFAT) |
| 8 GB | Linux Swap | |
| / | 10 GB | Linux native (ext4 or btrfs are recommended) |
Always remember that you should not mount the swap partition anywhere on the device just leave the mountpoint empty
Taking the Windows dual boot example from below with swap your partition table should look like this if you have 8GB of RAM
| Mountpoint | Size | FS |
|---|---|---|
| Windows EFI | 100 MB | Fat32 |
| Microsoft reserved | 250 MB | NTFS |
| Basic data part. | 250 GB | NTFS |
| Windows Recovery | 800 MB | NTFS |
| /boot/efi | 250 MB | FAT32 |
| 4 GB | Linux Swap | |
| / | 240 GB | EXT4 |
Here is an example for windows dual boot on a 500G drive:
| Mountpoint | Size | FS |
|---|---|---|
| Windows EFI | 100 MB | Fat32 |
| Microsoft reserved | 250 MB | NTFS |
| Basic data part. | 250 GB | NTFS |
| Windows Recovery | 800 MB | NTFS |
| /boot/efi | 250 MB | FAT32 |
| / | 240 GB | EXT4 |
When finished with partitioning, click Next to continue.