Will be installing either Mint or Pop_OS on a new laptop which has a 512gb SSD. Will keep Windows for gaming, at least for now, with the games installed on an external HD. But otherwise, this is to experiment with living in Linux.
I understand that I can unallocate HD space from Windows in order to make room for the LInux OS, leaving at least 25 or 30gb for the Linux OS itself.
Do I then extend that space further, so to speak, to allow for any other programs I might install as well as for data? Do I create a third partition for data that will be shared between the two OS?
What’s a reasonable breakdown?
e.g.
Windows 100gb; Linux 400gb or
Win 100gb; Linux 30gb; Data (NTFS) 370gb?
My opinion. Keep it simple and don’t use a separate partition for home. You never know which directory will be larger (home or root). Just keep a live USB handy so that you can repair the bootloader or fstab or whatever config that got messed up. Keeping a separate partition is not that helpful because even if you mess up, you can easily access your data within the same partition using a live USB.
You’re keeping a common NTFS partition so my advice is to store everything there (downloads, documents, media files) unless it specifically requires a linux filesystem (like app images). So whatever will be left in your linux partitions will be smaller, both in size and number, so you can take a backup easily in case your OS doesn’t boot.
I appreciate the input, thank you. When you say live USB, is it one that contains the original data used to create the distro — like, e.g. what I’d download from Mint? Or do you mean to just copy the whole LInux partition (given that it’s small enough) onto a USB?
LiveUSB means a usb stick from which you can boot linux temporarily (in case of Ubuntu LiveUSB, the option says something like “try Ubuntu before installing”) and which also provides you an option to install/reinstall the OS.
You can boot from a USB like that and still access and manipulate files on your SSD/HDD.
No hard requirement for it to be the same distro that you have installed, just convenient in case you want to reinstall.