Arch Linux

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Partitioning, slow HDDs, and desktop interactivity

I'm curious how many of you have tried something like this for a partition layout:

sda1: 4GB ext4 /usr/lib
sda2: 2GB swap
sda5: 30GB /
sda6: 78GB /home

Keeping most shared libraries in the first partition, at the edge of the disk, seems to be helpful (by wall clock measurements at least) for desktop performance on laptops with slow HDDs; especially when running applications that use lots of said libraries. Not really surprising when you think about it... But anyway I thought I'd put that out there for anyone who is (re)installing in the near future.

I'm not sure if this works on Arch (or Fedora) though, what with the /usr migration.

Edit: this would definitely not work on Arch, seeing as init links to systemd in /usr/lib... Oh well.

Last edited by Gullible Jones (2013-09-24 05:50:28)

Pse

Member

Registered: 2008-03-15

Posts: 413

Re: Partitioning, slow HDDs, and desktop interactivity

I think most libraries are cached given enough RAM and a reasonable uptime. You can also run prelink as well, which should at least help. I guess the only real benefit of such a layout would be faster boot times, perhaps?