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As far as I know, Steam (and pretty much every other application) is installed to the "/" partition. If that's the case, why is such a small "/" partition recommended? Couldn't one or two Steam games wipe out your "/" fairly easily? It seems like a "/" partition of 20GB max is usually recommended.

Am I missing something, or if I plan on installing games and applications should I make a larger "/" partition?

EDIT: I'm asking because I haven't actually seen anyone mention this before. The general recommendation is to have a seperate /boot, /, /home, and swap partition, and the general consensus is that a "/" partition doesn't need to be any bigger than 10GB - 20GB. It seems as though everyone recommends something like this:

/boot - 500MB

/ - 10GB - 20GB

swap - same as RAM

/home - rest.

Maybe I'm weird, but looking at my Windows 7 install "Program Files accounts for nearly 700GB of disk usage, and everything else (including Windows 7) is barely 100GB. Is that not normal? It just seems more normal in my mind to have "/" and /home switched.

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    Steam installs games to your home directory. So a separate home partition (with "rest" presumably being a large number) is the way to go with Steam.
    – muru
    Apr 20, 2015 at 20:17
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    I don't recommend a separate /boot partition as it tends to get filled with old kernels, as old kernels are not automatically deleted when the kernel is updated. If you create a /boot partition you have to remove the old kernels from time to time.
    – user68186
    Apr 20, 2015 at 20:28

2 Answers 2

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By default Steam stores games in your home directory (hence home partition) under ~/.local/share/Steam, not in the root partition - Steam I don't think is made to have games available system-wide. When you install a game it gives you a option to install it elsewhere:

enter image description here

As you can see above, I have created a folder extra in the root partition under which I install steam games that won't fit in my home directory (this folder also means I have somewhere to put stuff if I run out of space on another partition):

enter image description here Here are the commands I created that directory with (you could easily call it something else):

sudo mkdir /extra
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /extra

The first step creates the directory, the seconds makes sure you can access it as a normal user.

I don't where you got your drive size recommendations from, but I would say a / partition with a minimum size of 20GB (mine contains 25 Gb of files excluding the above Steam installed game, possibly due to other non-steam games and VM programs installed to the root partition), to allow enough space to install various programs to meet your needs (total size of my root partition is 50 Gb). Swap needs to be sized to meet your RAM size (also depending on whether you want to hibernate the computer or not - a opinion on how to do this is here). With swap you can also create a swap file which is one of the partitions, see here

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U don't need to create /boot. If u want have 2 systems, u can install grub on /.(/ would have 10/20 GB) So 2 partition(/,/home) will be good and u can choose where install game on steam. If u have more than 4/8 GB don't create swap cause it ll be not used.

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  • You'll need swap of some description (it can be a file under /) if you want to hibernate the system, or if you run memory-intensive programs (e.g. some Steam games...) - see here: help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq#Why_do_I_need_swap.3F. Note you can edit your questions & answers to include additional info.
    – Wilf
    Apr 20, 2015 at 20:30
  • Default steam is installed /home/lyricepicdrama/.local/share/Steam/ .local is hide catalog if u use x server press ctrl+h to see it Apr 20, 2015 at 20:30

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