Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1520604
Accepted
karel
Asked: 2024-07-15 16:04:08 +0800 CST

Do Ubuntu Desktop installations need manual partitioning anymore?

  • 772

Are there any Ubuntu installation scenarios which still require manual partitioning? By "manual partitioning" I mean using the Something else option for partitioning of the pending Ubuntu installation.

On new installations of Ubuntu 17.04 and later a swap file is created by default instead of a swap partition. Among other things this saves valuable disk space on the SSD for users who have SSDs. For the purpose of limiting the scope of this question so it will not become too broad I am making these three assumptions.

  • The computer has an SSD or NVMe that has enough available disk space to allow Ubuntu to be installed on it without giving Ubuntu less than the recommended disk space for a normal installation.
  • Partitioning a small amount of disk space to install the bootloader and installing the bootloader on it can be done automatically by the Ubuntu installer. I know that sometimes the Ubuntu installer has problems correctly configuring the bootloader, but I am making this possible problem outside the scope of this question in order to keep it from being too broad.
  • The Ubuntu installation is Ubuntu Desktop, not Ubuntu Server as I also mentioned in the question's title.

The Ubuntu installer includes a user-friendly option for installing Ubuntu alongside Windows. This option is designed to automatically create the necessary partitions for Ubuntu while preserving the existing Windows installation. Maybe this option doesn't work for some multiboot scenarios. Therefore I am including it in the scope of this question.

dual-boot

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Depends...

    This install was made using defaults given I wanted to do the install as a QA testcase; however my preference would have been a separate /home (ie. Manual Partitioning) as it has greater re-install options (esp. 24.04 for example, where format is forced currently)

    For most users default is fine (what I'm using now!); some users may get better from manual still.

    If interested about the forced format, more details maybe found on an answer here on this site

    Example:

    I did a re-install yesterday on this box; and used 24.04 where the ubuntu-desktop-installer has a FORCED FORMAT, but I wanted a non-destructive re-install, and my use of the defaults at initial install due to using QA testcase meant I had a single partition only install. I opted to use a calamares installer ISO so as to achieve what I wanted. Whilst I'm happy to change packages to make the system what I want (ie. install Kubuntu, then switch the install to Ubuntu Desktop myself), many users (esp. newer users) won't want to use a Kubuntu/Lubuntu/Ubuntu-Unity ISO to install a system that they're going to switch to Ubuntu Desktop themselves. The non-destructive re-install I achieved would not have been possible with a Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Desktop in my case using ubuntu-desktop-installer (it would have been a clean system, my manually-installed packages not auto-reinstalled, and my data needing to be restored from backups), but even if I'd have a separate /home and my data was safe, the system would not have auto-reinstalled the packages my install method achieved.

    • 3