Re: How much drive space for Linux?

From: Robert M. Riches Jr. (spamtrap42_at_verizon.net)
Date: 01/28/04 

Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 05:19:12 GMT

In article <jim-A2A47F.20533527012004@news.zianet.com>, Jim Kroger wrote:
> How much drive space should I set aside for Linux (the root partition)?
> I will have a full kde & gnome system, plus five or ten applications.
> Is 4 gigs enough?
>
> Thanks
> Jim
>
>
> (this is a repost...my other ISP never sent it out, so apologies if it
> appears again)
>
> re: How much drive space for Linux?

It depends somewhat on which five or ten applications you
mean. Ten of the biggest take considerably more space than
five of the smallest.

Also, will you be using a swap file sitting on this
partition or a separate swap partition? How much RAM do you
have, and how much heavy RAM-intensive work do you plan to
do? It is generally recommended to have twice as much swap
space as you have RAM. (Disk is normally considered to be
cheap and plentiful, relative to RAM, but if you're using
more than twice your RAM in swap space, you're probably
thrashing beyond hope.) If you have enough RAM for what you
plan to do, you _might_ get by with less swap space.

For one reference point, I just installed RHL 9 with
"everything", and it's taking a little over 5GB plus space
space. With luck, a few other people will post their
reference points.

If you can afford a couple of hours to experiment, you could
make the attempt to install it and see whether it fits. If
it doesn't fit, that attempt ends up being valuable practice
for your next installation (attempt).

Good luck.

Robert Riches
spamtrap42@verizon.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

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