Help on Choosing Filesystems for Arch Install

Help Desk Linux Installation Help
1

I recently decided to graduate from being a filthy dual-booter to 100% glorious Arch (with a small partition set aside for distrohopping.) At first, I had a really clear idea of how I would format everything, but I quickly realized I had forgotten how many options there are.

Currently, my setup is:

  • 256 GB NVMe SSD:
    • 300 MB ESP (FAT32, obviously)
    • Windows 10 and all of its mysterious partitions
    • 500 MB unencrypted /boot partition (EXT4)
    • Root partition made up of what was left over, which comes out to ~84 GB (XFS on LUKS2)
  • 2 TB SATA SSHD
    • 8 GB swap partition (plain-encrypted)
    • /home partition of all remaining available space (XFS LUKS2)

I’m looking at a setup like this:

  • 256 GB NVMe SSD
    • 300 MB ESP (FAT32)
    • 500 MB /boot partition, kept seperate in case some other distro installs kernels in the ESP (EXT4)
    • 30 GB root partition (Btrfs on LUKS)
    • Remaining space for game library (F2FS or XFS—Btrfs seems like a waste for a game partition—on LUKS)
  • 2 TB SATA SSHD
    • EITHER:
      • 8 GB swap (plain-encrypted)
      • Remaining space for /home (Btrfs on LUKS)
    • OR:
      • LVM group on LUKS
        • 8 GB swap
        • 10 GB free space left to create LVM snapshot of /home for online backup
        • Remaining space for /home (XFS)
    • 100 GB or so left alone in case I ever have to scratch my distrohopping itch

I had considered using ZFS in place of Btrfs, but Btrfs seems easier to get up and running on Linux, more optimized for the desktop, and stable enough, with the added plus of being able to use Snapper.

Any advice or recommendations would be welcome. Thanks!

2

I would suggest ext4 for a game library, as some games (borderlands series for instance) only seem to work that filesystem.

I would also keep home on the SSD, and have a shared data partition on the sshd. Home doesn’t need much in my experience.

3

Shared data partition storing what? I’m not sure what the use case would be for that. I do agree that 1.9 TB is a lot of space for /home, but it’s the drive I have.

4

In my use case, my son and I share a PC for when his friends want to game with him. The shared games library is on the shared data partition.

Also a good place for local backups of home, and useful data, for later syncing to offsite storage.