Minimum recommended partition size for Lite 3.4 64 install?

[gold_finger]

SO I have two options, as I see it.


1) Wipe drive, clean install Lite alongside Mint Mate (supposedly lighter DE than Cinnamon) both in 20 Gb partitions, 4 Gb swap, remaining space for /Home. 

2) Use gparted to delete 44 Gb Win partition, (and prob 10 Gb Zorin Partition), move Lite partition with gparted, resize to 20 Gb? Create Mint partition 20 Gb. Make Swap 4 Gb again. Remaining hd0 space for /Home.  I am expecting this messing around w/ gparted may botch the recently fixed grub ldr?? Then install Mint Mate.. which may fix the GRUB, just like LL install did? This way sounds messy, but could save time on LL reinstall....

Option #1 is definitely the easiest and fastest -- I'd recommend you go with that, but with a slight change.  Instead of making a large /home partition to share between the two (or three) distros, make it just a data storage partition that gets linked back to your /home folders on each distro.


Your /home on each distro contains various configuration files in addition to being the standard location to store data.  If you try to share same partition as /home for all distros there is a good chance that some of the configs specific to one may cause conflicts and/or odd behavior in one of the other distros.  Best thing to do is just let /home reside on each distro's root partition, then have a separate data only partition that gets mounted to and used by each distro as a central location for storing docs, music, videos, etc.


Probably easiest thing to do would be:

• Boot with live LL or Mint USB, open GParted and delete all partitions.  Hit "Apply" when done.
  
• Still in GParted, now create new partitions -- root and data partitions formatted as "Ext4" and swap as "linux-swap".  Hit "Apply" when done.
  
• Exit GParted, start installer, use the "Something Else" install option so you can manually direct install to specific root partition you have in mind for each distro.  (I'm guessing you already know how to do this based on things you've described doing already.  If not, ask or see help manual for more guidance.)
  
• Don't bother doing anything with the data partition at this point -- don't set mount point, format, or anything.
  
• HINT:  Use same exact username when installing each distro.  That will ensure you don't end up with confusing file permissions problems on the shared data partition.
  
• Finish your first install and boot into it.
  
• Follow directions in this tutorial to setup and use the data partition.
  
• Reboot computer into currently installed system and see if data partition is auto-mounted and you can properly access and use it.
  
• If all is well, shutdown and boot with next distro's USB/DVD.
  
• Install next distro same way, with one exception:  when setting partitions you'll also tell system to use the data partition.  Set mount point for root like you normally do, then set mount point for the data partition by manually typing it in, eg /mnt/DATA, (it won't exist in the drop-down menu).  To avoid confusion, use same mount point as you did on first distro.  IMPORTANT:  do not check the box to format the data partition.
  
• If you want the first installed distro to remain in control of booting, tell installer to put grub boot loader on the root partition of this distro (eg. /dev/sda3) instead of the MBR (/dev/sda).  If you do this you won't need to remember which distro last installed grub to MBR.  When you reboot after install, you'll not see an entry for booting the new distro.  You need to boot into first distro and run command to update grub so it can find and add the new distro to the boot choices, (sudo update-grub in a terminal.)
  
• Boot into the new distro and setup symlinks to data partition like you did in first distro.  (Since you're using same username, you will not have to also run commands to change ownership again -- it will already be set correctly from what you did in first distro.)
  
• Done.
  

P.s.  If you forget to setup data partition on 2nd or 3rd distros while installing, don't worry about it.  Just follow steps in tutorial to manually add it like you did on first distro.