Remove/bury the archinstall traditional partition scheme

snarf · 2026-01-26 12:19:22

Linux install has been this way forever (long before arch existed) and it just does not make sense anymore. Nobody wants the tiny root partition. Oh but I can re-install and keep my /home. I do not care and it's actually harder than just copying files around or using a different physical disk. It's not 1992 and I'm not specifying the cylinders, heads, and sectors to my bios. The tiny root is dumb.

Do whatever you need to do for uefi to work but beyond that please one partition per disk.

WorMzy · 2026-01-26 12:24:55

Then partition manually.

Mod note: Moving to Archinstall subforum.

Lone_Wolf · 2026-01-26 12:28:18

The Official installation guide very clearly states you have to decide on the partition scheme you want.

You're probably using the archinstall script which follows the ideas of its creator Torxed and does seem to have a standard partitioning setup.
Torxed and the team that develops/maintains archinstall are the only ones that can change that setup.

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2026-01-26 12:29:25)

Torxed · 2026-04-30 14:29:36

I tend to agree that the separate home causes confusion. But it is a question that comes up when selecting a journaling filesystem (ext4 etc).

We could make that more clear with a warning: "You will be left with a tiny root" as we base it on a percentage of your disk.

cryptearth · 2026-04-30 15:29:05

i disagree with "one partition per physical drive" - in both ways: multiple partitions per drive as well as one partition spanning multiple drives

as for the size of the root partition: the uefi ESP repeats tge same but yet another level
microsoft decided: "100mb is enough for our uefi bootloader" - and although currently at around 75mb used likely in the future this won't be enough anymore so M$ has to step up
tge same they should have done so long ago with the recovery partition as first a new recovery environment is to get copied on to it before the existing one is removed - this resulted in the offficial workaround: shrink your system partition to make space to enlarge the RE partition

i, on the other end of the spectrum, use several forms of multiple drive arrays as underlying storage for large spanning virtual volumes
currebtly i have a 24tb zfs pool over 8 3tb hdd with 18tb useable and can lose up to two drives at once - which i already experienced

for me, having a rather small root is fine - both on windows and on linux - because all installs happen on to different partitions or drives or arrays

point is, as already noted: you fix on the archinstall helper - which is just one way to setup arch - and for reasons unknown to me got it's own forum section
vanilla arch itself has only one official way of proper install: the manual one

tldr: you blame a very broad spectrum just because of one helper script - i'm not sure if you understand archinstall or the reason why does things as it does - maybe rephrase to "why?" instead of "that's stupid" first?

Arch Linux

#1 2026-01-26 12:19:22

Remove/bury the archinstall traditional partition scheme

#2 2026-01-26 12:24:55

Re: Remove/bury the archinstall traditional partition scheme

#3 2026-01-26 12:28:18

Re: Remove/bury the archinstall traditional partition scheme

#4 2026-04-30 14:29:36

Re: Remove/bury the archinstall traditional partition scheme

#5 2026-04-30 15:29:05

Re: Remove/bury the archinstall traditional partition scheme

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