experimenting with my 2014 macbook pro and several linux distros (xubuntu, mint, fedora)

So far I have 8 partitions:

  • 1 EFI for grub,
  • 1 hfs+ (Linux HFS+ ESP) for OCLP, I think,
  • 1 apfs for the macOS 14 I cannot boot,
  • 2 ext4 for xubuntu and mint
  • 1 brfs for fedora (so it cannot be ext4?)
  • 2 unallocated ones, because I deleted systems I don’t want.

I use gparted: the 2 unallocated sections are separated. Is this a problem?

How many partitions are too many for this machine? 247 GiB storage and 7.66 GiB memory.

After I’m done experimenting and keep the 2 to 3 operative systems I like, should I wipe the notebook, create the 2 to 3 partitions I’m going to need and reinstall? Or would it be better to simply delete the partitions I don’t want?

  • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    It’s only a problem if your software can’t address that many. Any modern software can handle up to 128 primary partitions on GPT.

    Just deleting the excess ones and resizing the remainder is fine.

  • 342345@feddit.de
    1·
    8 months ago

    Lvm could be the way to go. Start with the minimum amount of partitions (i.e. / and /boot and swap as lv, maybe efi as a real partition). Add additional lv later if/ when you need them. You can always re-size a partition and the wrapping lv when you want to re- distribute storage-space.

    I never needed more than these partitions. But that is just my use case.

    Edit: oh. Missed the Multi boot point. Forget what I wrote. :)

  • 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    8 months ago

    Theoretically you could put all the Linux installations on a single big btrfs partition under different subvolumes.