I'm in the process of transitioning from Windows 10 to Linux and have installed Fedora 42 KDE Plasma on an old laptop to get a feel for it. On my desktop, I currently have a 1 TB SSD as the main drive, in addition to two large SATA drives filled with various files, including several TB of photos from my hobbyist photography. All drives are formatted with NTFS. I've wiped the SSD on my laptop and am now using Btrfs. My SATA drive still runs NTFS. My main questions are:
1. For my desktop, if I wipe the SSD to run Btrfs, is it okay to keep the other drives as NTFS? Will there be issues moving files between different file systems? Should I plan to switch them to Btrfs eventually?
2. When setting up Fedora on my desktop, are the partition sizes I used on my laptop optimal? I'm concerned about having enough space for future needs since I'll be installing games and managing photo database files.
3. Lastly, I'd love recommendations for resources to learn about Linux file systems and folder structures. With my background in Windows since 1994, I want to get a good understanding of how things work in Linux as I plan to switch over completely.
3 Answers
Your partition layout looks pretty solid! The swap size is generally fine, and having a larger EFI partition is always a safe bet—you don’t want to run out of space for kernel updates! As for future-proofing, you might consider separating your /home partition so you won’t lose your settings when you switch distributions.
Thanks for the advice! When you say to separate /home, do you mean creating a different partition for it during installation?
For resources on Linux folder structures, check out the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard page on Wikipedia. It’s a great starting point! Also, be careful relying too much on your Windows knowledge, as Linux can be quite different—especially with file handling. If you want to learn more about different file systems, there are tons of articles and videos available online that break down the pros and cons.
Great tips! Could you recommend specific articles or videos that cover file systems' use cases?
Sure! The Linux documentation project has a lot of detailed info, and channels like 'Learn Linux TV' on YouTube offer some great tutorials.
It's totally fine to run NTFS on your other drives for now! Linux can read and write to NTFS, but just keep in mind that NTFS support isn't perfect. If you're just using those drives for data like mp3s or movies, you'll be fine. However, if you want to run any Linux applications that require executable permissions, NTFS will give you some headaches due to its lack of support for Linux permissions. If you're fully transitioning to Linux, you might want to consider moving to Btrfs eventually for better compatibility and performance.
Thanks for the insight! Just to clarify, if I plan to do things like image editing, would I need those Linux permissions? Or is it mostly safe for reading files from NTFS?
Good question! For image editing, you can read and write just fine, but if your editing software needs certain permissions, you might run into issues. Something to keep in mind!
Exactly! That way, your personal files and app settings stay intact even if you reinstall the OS.