Great take. But you know the real sneaky one that trips you up? File system.
I wouldn’t call myself a beginner, but every time I install a Linux system seriously I see those filesystem choices and have to dig through volumes of turbo-nerd debates on super fine intricacies between them, usually debating their merits in super high-risk critical contexts.
I still don’t come away with knowing which one will be best for me long-term in a practical sense.
As well as tons of “It ruined my whole system” or “Wrote my SSD to death” FUD that is usually outdated but nevertheless persists.
Honestly nowadays I just happily throw BTRFS on there because it’s included on the install and allows snapshots and rollbacks. EZPZ.
For everything else, EXT4, and for OS-shared storage, NTFS.
But it took AGES to arrive to this conclusion. Beginners will have their heads spun at this choice, guaranteed. It’s frustrating.
I did NTFS because both windows and Linux can read it. Do I know literally any other fact about formatting systems? Nope. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to, I’m normie-adjacent. I just want my system to work so I can use the internet, play games, and do word processing.
I once tried to install my Steam Library in Linux to an NTFS partition so I wouldn’t have to install things twice on a dual boot system. Protip: don’t do that.
chkdsk -f (or r or whatever the third option is), reboot twice, but do it multiple times because steam on linux asks you to reinstall the games in the exact same spot and you accidentally do it because you’re not paying close attention due to the mild panic windows threw at you?
There is a guide here that says you can do it, but my experience was that I installed the games in Windows on my D drive, mounted the drive in Linux (Mint, I think), and when I tried to play them The system locked up. Rebooting into windows, Steam said the game files were corrupt and I had to reinstall them. I’ve always just kept two separate game libraries on any dual boot systems ever since.
Lending my voice to this as well for most, my thought is EXT4, without LVM, deferring to the preferred FS for the distro. It is a mature, stable, and reliable choice and logical volumes complicate things too much for beginners.
If dual-booting, yeah, definitely an NTFS partition for shared storage (just be aware that Windows can be weird with file permissions and ownership).
Ext4 is the safe bet for a beginner. The real question is with or without LVM. Generally I would say with but that abstraction layer between the filesystem and disk can really be confusing if you’ve never dealt with it before. A total beginner should probably go ext4 without LVM and then play around in a VM with the various options to become informed enough to do something less vanilla.
It makes adding space easier down the road, either by linking disks or if you clone your root drive to a larger drive, which tends to not be something most “end users” (I try not to use that description but you said it heh) would do. Yes, using LVM is optional.
Yes, I listened to a podcast about that recently. Linux was far with XFS or something, but then Apple came, improved their HFS and actually made tools for it and it got better.
BTRFS is just as established as etx4, just not as damn old. It also just works, and it has advanced features that are crucial for backups. But I have no idea how to use btrbk and there is no GUI so nobody uses that.
But as a filesystem that just works like ext4, plus the automatically configured snapshots in both regular and atomic Fedora systems and OpenSuse, BTRFS is awesome.
Only outdated Distros that fear change stick with ext4, at least thats my opinion.
I’m still figuring it out. I know ExFAT works across all desktop OS’s, NTFS works with Linux and Windows, and ext4 only works with Linux.
But it took a half hour of googling to figure out you can’t install Linux on NTFS. I planned to do that to ease cross platform compatibility. Oops. I’m also attempting a RAID 1 array using NTFS. It seems to work, but I’m not sure how to automatically mount it on boot. I feel like I might have picked the wrong filesystem.
Hey there friend! Sorry to hear about your woes.
From my understanding in practice, ExFAT is usually better as more of a universally readable storage system for external drives. Think, using the same portable drive between your PS5, friend’s mac, and whatever else. Great for large files and backups! Maybe not as much for running your OS from.
My approach and recommendation would be that you don’t want OS’s seeing each others’ important business anyway. Permissions and stuff can get wonky for instance.
So your core Linux install can be something like EXT4 or BTRFS. I like BTRFS personally because you can set up recovery snapshots without taking tons of space. It does require a little extra understanding and tooling though, but it’s worth looking into. (There’s GUI based BTRFS tools now though. Yay!)
EXT4 is nice and reliable and basic. Not much to say, really! Both can do RAID 1.
Next, a /home mounted separately, this COULD be NTFS if you really wanted that sharing. (BTW there’s some Windows drivers that can read EXT4 I think?)
BUT I feel more organized using a different way:
What I do personally is keep an NTFS partition I call something like “DATA” or “MAIN_STORAGE” and I mount this into my /home on Linux. It’s usually a separate, chunky 4TB HDD or something.
On Windows this is my D:\ drive, and it’s also where I store my project files, media, and whatever else I want easily accessible. Both OSs see those system-agnostic files, but are safely unaware of each other’s core system files.
In Linux, you can mount any folder anywhere, really! You can mount it on startup by amending your FSTAB on an existing install or setting the option during installs sometimes.
So the file path looks something like /home/MonkeMischief/DATA/Music
It’s treated just like any other folder but it’s in fact an entirely separate drive. :)
I hope this was somewhat helpful and not just confusing. In practice, it’ll start to make more sense I hope!
The important thing is to make sure your stuff is backed up.
… Perhaps to a big chonky brick formatted as ExFAT if you so choose. ;)
Honestly, I’d say the defaults most distros use will be fine for most users… If they don’t know why they should use one filesystem over another, then it’s almost certainly not going to matter for them
Great take. But you know the real sneaky one that trips you up? File system.
I wouldn’t call myself a beginner, but every time I install a Linux system seriously I see those filesystem choices and have to dig through volumes of turbo-nerd debates on super fine intricacies between them, usually debating their merits in super high-risk critical contexts.
I still don’t come away with knowing which one will be best for me long-term in a practical sense.
As well as tons of “It ruined my whole system” or “Wrote my SSD to death” FUD that is usually outdated but nevertheless persists.
Honestly nowadays I just happily throw BTRFS on there because it’s included on the install and allows snapshots and rollbacks. EZPZ.
For everything else, EXT4, and for OS-shared storage, NTFS.
But it took AGES to arrive to this conclusion. Beginners will have their heads spun at this choice, guaranteed. It’s frustrating.
I did NTFS because both windows and Linux can read it. Do I know literally any other fact about formatting systems? Nope. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to, I’m normie-adjacent. I just want my system to work so I can use the internet, play games, and do word processing.
I once tried to install my Steam Library in Linux to an NTFS partition so I wouldn’t have to install things twice on a dual boot system. Protip: don’t do that.
chkdsk -f (or r or whatever the third option is), reboot twice, but do it multiple times because steam on linux asks you to reinstall the games in the exact same spot and you accidentally do it because you’re not paying close attention due to the mild panic windows threw at you?
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows
There is a guide here that says you can do it, but my experience was that I installed the games in Windows on my D drive, mounted the drive in Linux (Mint, I think), and when I tried to play them The system locked up. Rebooting into windows, Steam said the game files were corrupt and I had to reinstall them. I’ve always just kept two separate game libraries on any dual boot systems ever since.
Lending my voice to this as well for most, my thought is EXT4, without LVM, deferring to the preferred FS for the distro. It is a mature, stable, and reliable choice and logical volumes complicate things too much for beginners.
If dual-booting, yeah, definitely an NTFS partition for shared storage (just be aware that Windows can be weird with file permissions and ownership).
Ext4 is the safe bet for a beginner. The real question is with or without LVM. Generally I would say with but that abstraction layer between the filesystem and disk can really be confusing if you’ve never dealt with it before. A total beginner should probably go ext4 without LVM and then play around in a VM with the various options to become informed enough to do something less vanilla.
This part is skippable, right? Any reason a user should ever care about this?
(note: never heard of LVM before this thread)
It makes adding space easier down the road, either by linking disks or if you clone your root drive to a larger drive, which tends to not be something most “end users” (I try not to use that description but you said it heh) would do. Yes, using LVM is optional.
Yes, I listened to a podcast about that recently. Linux was far with XFS or something, but then Apple came, improved their HFS and actually made tools for it and it got better.
BTRFS is just as established as etx4, just not as damn old. It also just works, and it has advanced features that are crucial for backups. But I have no idea how to use btrbk and there is no GUI so nobody uses that.
But as a filesystem that just works like ext4, plus the automatically configured snapshots in both regular and atomic Fedora systems and OpenSuse, BTRFS is awesome.
Only outdated Distros that fear change stick with ext4, at least thats my opinion.
I’m still figuring it out. I know ExFAT works across all desktop OS’s, NTFS works with Linux and Windows, and ext4 only works with Linux.
But it took a half hour of googling to figure out you can’t install Linux on NTFS. I planned to do that to ease cross platform compatibility. Oops. I’m also attempting a RAID 1 array using NTFS. It seems to work, but I’m not sure how to automatically mount it on boot. I feel like I might have picked the wrong filesystem.
Hey there friend! Sorry to hear about your woes. From my understanding in practice, ExFAT is usually better as more of a universally readable storage system for external drives. Think, using the same portable drive between your PS5, friend’s mac, and whatever else. Great for large files and backups! Maybe not as much for running your OS from.
My approach and recommendation would be that you don’t want OS’s seeing each others’ important business anyway. Permissions and stuff can get wonky for instance.
So your core Linux install can be something like EXT4 or BTRFS. I like BTRFS personally because you can set up recovery snapshots without taking tons of space. It does require a little extra understanding and tooling though, but it’s worth looking into. (There’s GUI based BTRFS tools now though. Yay!)
EXT4 is nice and reliable and basic. Not much to say, really! Both can do RAID 1.
Next, a /home mounted separately, this COULD be NTFS if you really wanted that sharing. (BTW there’s some Windows drivers that can read EXT4 I think?)
BUT I feel more organized using a different way:
What I do personally is keep an NTFS partition I call something like “DATA” or “MAIN_STORAGE” and I mount this into my /home on Linux. It’s usually a separate, chunky 4TB HDD or something.
On Windows this is my D:\ drive, and it’s also where I store my project files, media, and whatever else I want easily accessible. Both OSs see those system-agnostic files, but are safely unaware of each other’s core system files.
In Linux, you can mount any folder anywhere, really! You can mount it on startup by amending your FSTAB on an existing install or setting the option during installs sometimes.
So the file path looks something like /home/MonkeMischief/DATA/Music
It’s treated just like any other folder but it’s in fact an entirely separate drive. :)
I hope this was somewhat helpful and not just confusing. In practice, it’ll start to make more sense I hope! The important thing is to make sure your stuff is backed up.
… Perhaps to a big chonky brick formatted as ExFAT if you so choose. ;)
Honestly, I’d say the defaults most distros use will be fine for most users… If they don’t know why they should use one filesystem over another, then it’s almost certainly not going to matter for them