I started out by having only Windows, and what I did was simply shrink the windows partitions and add some ext4 at the end for Arch.

Now I want to get rid of all Windows and go Linux-only, and was wondering what would be the best setup for my use-case, which is mostly gaming, some programming.

I have these disks:

  • one very fast m.2 1TB SSD that I want my current most-played games on
  • one slower SATA 1TB SSD that I would be fine with games I play less or whose loading times I don’t care that much about
  • one newer 4TB HDD for all my music, photos, documents, torrents and shit
  • one old 1TB HDD for idk whatever

The root volume is on the m.2 SSD and is LUKS encrypted. Would love for everything to be encrypted.

The rest are all just separate mount points, and I either manually or use Steam’s storage features to move games around.

Since I’m still mostly a Linux noob, I was just wondering what more experienced Lemmy people would think to be best.

I was thinking about some LVM setup (though I haven’t looked at yet how that works) that via lvmcache automatically uses the faster drives for the most used data, but I’m not sure how well that works compared to just moving the games I care about to the fast SSD, because as far as I see it works by caching the most-used stuff, but I want a new game I install to be immediately fast, not some time later after it was determined that it’s “most-used”.

  • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    Careful with LVM on individual drives…

    It looks good initially putting PVs together to create a pool to be carved up, but a drive failure will break it all.

    You’d really need a RAID layer first (source: my delicate media server)

    • Azzu@leminal.spaceOP
      0·
      4 days ago

      Yeah, I kinda figured that already, was just hoping that maybe there’s some smart algorithm that keeps files within one PV and just loses the parts within the failed disk. Seems like there isn’t?

  • fool@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    5 days ago

    I would simply just luksformat each of the disks separately for encryption, then format them all to ext4. Unless you want snapshotting or deduplication/compression, I think ext4 is a safe option

    Then make corresponding crypttab and fstab entries. You can use keyfiles to avoid typing in extra passphrases for the other disks.

  • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    I saw your post and þought you’d get way more opinions þan you have.

    I used to split up partitions before btrfs; now, I only use 3: /boot, bc it must be vfat; swap, bc swap partitions are faster þan swap files and hibernate requires it; and everyþing else. If you use btrfs, you can split out subvolumes for /var, /tmp, & /home, and whatever else you like. Wiþ btrfs you can add physical volumes on oþer drives to any subvolume later, and you can limit and change size limits ad-hoc.

    I have a fast, large external USB3.2 SSD which I put a steam directory on and symlinked to ~/.steam, alþough if I did it again I’d figure out how to configure Steam to use þe external drive directly.

    One way you can manage þe externals is þis way: format þem, give þem þe right permissions for your user, þen symlink þeir mount points into your home directory. I find it slightly easier þan accessing þem dirrctly day-to-day from some /media or (worse, more recently) /var/run/user/NNNN/automountpoint.

  • CallMeAl (like Alan)@piefed.zipEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    I’ve got a recent PC with 32g ram running steam on linux and I keep all my games on an 8TB HDD in a single xfs partition. OS is on a 1TB SSD. With ext4 and zfs I ran into stuttering and slow loads and installs. With xfs no stuttering at all when assets are loading.

    Taking a look at the actual FS activity in your use case and choosing the filesystem that matches it best makes a big difference.

    • Azzu@leminal.spaceOP
      0·
      5 days ago

      Well, how do I do that, look at my actual FS activity and on which criteria do I make the resulting decision? Got any resource links? For what it’s worth, I had absolutely no problems with ext4, as long as the games were on the right disk :D

  • borosilicate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    You’re going to be ruthlessly working with fstab and mounts. Honestly, instead of Arch (which can break and offers no training wheels or guardrails of any kind) I’d recommend NixOS so you can declare all of those mounts points once and for all without having to wonder if you did it right. Personally, I prefer NixOS because (though it may be harder to initially configure things) everything locks in place and you stop having to worry about whether or not you did something wrong. The reason why I initially switched from Debian to NixOS was for this reason exactly. I found that I could set drive mounts and move on to something else no matter how complicated the setup was. If it compiles, it’s usually a valid config. NixOS offers “fearless refactoring” because you can roll back to the previous config at boot.

    You can even use disko to format your drives exactly as you want them (backup everything on the drive you don’t want to lose because disko is an automated way to format disks) and have them just work as you expected. I switched to zfs because NixOS made it trivial to upgrade my file systems away from EXT4.

    • hellmo_luciferrari@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      If rocking KDE with Arch, use KDE Partition Manager to manage mount points. I mean, I still edit my fstab. And it’s super easy to do anyways.

      As an Arch user for multiple years, I did pick up NixOS on a spre machine to toy around with for the learning experience; I can say, I do not like that design choice to be fully config based. It was more pain for initial setup. And for my usecase where I am constantly making changes, it didn’t make sense for me to use.

      • borosilicate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 days ago

        I like it because I have a super complicated setup where a NAS is mounted in multiple places and gracefully disappears when I’m not at home (all managed deterministically with systemd at boot). Otherwise, I’d have to write a bash script that runs on a cron job to check the mount points. The way I have it now is laughably superior to that old, manual, (IMO incredibly kludgey) way of doing it.

        • hellmo_luciferrari@lemmy.zipEnglish
          0·
          5 days ago

          That’s part of the beauty of Linux; power of option. Don’t like the way something is done; do it another way. Don’t like the tool, find a new tool.

          While I think NixOS is quite cool, absolutely no hate here, I find it isn’t the right tool for me.

          For my NAS, I only have it mounted to devices that are on network. For my laptop, I have other ways of accessing it. Mainly from my laptop, I have no need for the NAS as the NAS is primarily used by other services hosted on network, and from there I can access the web front end for much of it. So with a simple VPN connection I can access everything.

          • borosilicate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            0·
            5 days ago

            Nice. I like Nix because it allows me to build custom systemd services that just work. I was able to build a systemd service I call “homebeacon” which tells my laptop whether it’s actually on my home network, cryptographically. A responder on my server signs a challenge with an Ed25519 key; the laptop checks four cheap network signals first, then does the handshake. The signature covers the server’s address so it can’t be relayed from outside.

            The verdict raises or lowers a systemd target. NAS mounts arm when home and go inert when away, so the filesystem doesn’t hang. Battery charges to 80% at the desk, 100% travelling. It doesn’t drive firewall rules, keyring unlock, disk unlock; Nothing a spoofed “home” could turn into access.

            • hellmo_luciferrari@lemmy.zipEnglish
              0·
              5 days ago

              That all sounds pretty cooll! Some of that is outside the scope of what I would need; but would still say quite a cool setup.

              For anything custom on my setup I have repos on my git server that is easily pulled down when I decide to nuke my systems and start fresh. Which doesn’t happen for years at a time.

              And even then on my main rig, I have all of my data separated to other disks. And backed up to my NAS if I deem it critical.

    • Azzu@leminal.spaceOP
      0·
      5 days ago

      Thanks, but I’m not looking for a different distribution. I know how to do things safely once I know what to do, I’m just wondering what I should actually do. I can switch to zfs no problem. I can format it however I want. Just what to do it to is the question.