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I want to use my laptop as an Ubuntu only device.

I have used Ubuntu before, with Windows 10 dual boot. I had to manually create hdd partitions like /root, /home, /swap during the process. (But reverted back to Windows 10 later)

Now if I select the 'erase disk and install Ubuntu' option, would those partitions be automatically created?

2 Answers 2

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The short answer is: These partitions will not be created.

The current LTS version of Ubuntu 20.04 doesn't use a separate swap partition anymore. Instead it uses a swapfile located in the root / directory.

Also by default Ubuntu doesn't create a separate partition for the /home directory, so if you want to locate that directory at separate partition you need create it.

If you choice to use the LVM option an additional partition will be created for the /boot directory. If it is UEFI installation a small EFI partition also will be created.

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Now if I select the 'erase disk and install Ubuntu' option, would those partitions be automatically created?

No. For starters: Ubuntu will no longer create a /swap. We use a swapfile nowadays. The default will use / and only /.

If you want full control over the partitioning choose "something else".

A regular desktop can do with a partition of 20 Gb for / and 5 Gb for /home and a personal data partition (remainder of the disk or a 2nd disk) with its own partition/mount point if you move the directories in there afterwards (so you basically use /home only for storing settings created by the system and not for your own stuff).

If that is not to you liking you can forgo that and set /home as large as you want.

The 20Gb for / is enough; you will never be able to install software from the repositories to the size of 20Gb. You will only reach that if you store personal data in / (like a website, mysql database or videos or something similar) and those should be on a different partition anyways.

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  • What's the point of multiple partitions on a single-user desktop? If you're worried about disk usage locking the system, it's /var that should be separated.
    – OrangeDog
    Aug 6, 2020 at 17:14
  • Having a separate /home partition you can install another distribution and just keep using the home partition and all your files and settings are just there. You may need to make sure the user ids are the same, but for a single-user desktop there is a good chance that both distributions use 1000 for the first user. Otherwise one must know how to chown the files, but the details are another question.
    – allo
    Aug 6, 2020 at 21:31
  • @OrangeDog Separate filesystems so if one gets corrupted, it is not going to affect everything. Aug 6, 2020 at 21:31

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