After nine months of not having booted my Windows even once, I think it's time to wipe the Windows related partitions once and for all and claim the space. The problem is I think the way my partitions are structured, it may not be that easy. I am assuming everything other than the two ext4 partitions will have to go. What do you think? r/linux4noobs -
Someone even suggested I nuked the whole thing and started again, which would be the absolute last resort and only when I ran out of space.
EDIT: In the end, having considered all replies, I decided to go with a compromise. I wiped the NTFS partitions and made an ext4 out of the unallocated space. Then, I moved /home to that new, larger partition and if it all continues working for a day or two, I will wipe the old and smaller /home, which is not mounted now anyway, and use it for storage. This allocation will last me for ages until I have to reinstall the OS, at which point I will use the opportunity to tidy things up. I thought this was not the time to break my system moving partitions. There were some hairy moments (eg when a UUID changed quietly and the system failed to start) but overall it was OK.
Thanks to everyone for the help. This thread was very educational and I hope others will find it useful too. As a sidenote, I posted the same question to a much bigger subreddit and I received very few responses and little help. So, the much smaller Lemmy wins hands down!
I have been wondering about this. People recommend backing up
/homeand then reinstalling very casually, eg many recommend a new install when the new Debian stable is released every two years. My personal files and most of my user setup are stored in/homebut wouldn't many customisations be stored in/? I have been tweaking things for nearly a year to get everything working. I wouldn't want to spend ages to reinstall applications (flatpaks and all) and re-create my working setup. People being so relaxed about nuking their setup tells me I may be missing something here.Yeah there's a fair bit outside of home people don't mention. Basically any system-level stuff: fstab mounts, all your system packages, /opt installs, config tweaks you had to do. It tales some time to get set back up after a while on the same install.
After having to reinstall a couple times myself I now don't touch anything outside of /home by hand. It's all scripted so that I can copy /home, run the script, and be back up and running. Well, theoretically, there's usually a hiccup or two. But the peace of mind knowing it's all (self) documenting is quite nice. Not for everybody of course.
your customizations should usually go in /etc and /usr/local so you could back those up. your distro ought to have a guide on backing up your package selection. but yeah i don't enjoy wiping everything and starting over
ah, OK it's not just me then. I find the prospect of having to reinstall Debian on my main work machine every two years is scary. I'd rather have the messy partitioning for the rest of my life :)
Why? Upgrading is pretty straightforward: it's a matter of editing a single text file.
if it helps i've been using the same install of gentoo since 2007. the hard drives, cpu, ram, init system, and everything else changed but it's still that same install. or is it? vsauce music
Very reassuring. The Ship of Theseus approach has been working for me for decades.
Honestly, those who reinstall constantly feel like people that don't take care of their stuff as they should. There's no need to reinstall.
I've been thinking of reinstalling my endeavourOS install to arch just because at the point I'm at, it's basically arch, but the system print shows endeavour, and low key pisses me off. It's such an incredibly stupid reason to reinstall, I want everything just like I have it currently, but changing the files so they think the system is arch sounds... Something I definitely shouldn't do. Dammit.
I'd take that with a pinch of salt. Over years, systems can get quite crufty and by my own experience, things like GNOME can break from upgrades even under Debian. A reinstall can tidy things up.