Windows 10 To Be A Free Upgrade: What Linux Users Need To Know

[TiberiusDuval]

But yes compared to quite many Linux distros Windows takes ridiculous amount of space. And I have quite bad habit from Windows days giving too much space for root filesystem, just checked that on my current Ubuntu installation, about 14 gigs used and root partition has 100 gigs free space. Maybe I should shrink it quite much, as it just wastes hd space currently...

[duby229]

I don't know how much Win 7 or 8 takes straight after clean install. (My Win7 is nowadays not quite clean, and I did not check up how much it took when I installed it on new machine.) Maybe about same as Vista. Though I remember having disk size problems with Win7 on previous machine. Not with clean install but after installing some needed software and Visual Studio. Even when I did not install Visual Studio on system disk but on other HD it took some space from system disk. And that said system disk was 80gb PATA drive, leading to some nasty problems....

Windows 7 is about 11-14 GB straight up after a clean install. It just depends on how big Windows makes the swap. I disable swap and hibernate, which brings it down to about 8 GB. I haven't installed 8 yet, so not sure about that.

The HD is the worst bottleneck. The more it has to read, the longer things takes. Smaller is always better.

[SystemCrasher]

I need to know only one thing

As Linux user I only need to know one thing: fuck you Microsoft. Fuck you. I had enough of your win8/vista/... shit so I will never go back. In Linux I can select desktop environment and override unpopular decisions. In windows its not a snowball chance in the hell - so once MS screws something, users are doomed to be screwed. So it would be really fair if MS will go to oblivion.

Sure, compared to win8 it seems to be some progress. Yet I'm fed up with MS methods of doing things. And declaring win32 apps legacy == death of windows. There is little point to mimic WinRT in wine - are there any valuable WinRT apps one can't replace? This only stands true for some ancient win32 crap.

[SystemCrasher]

But yes compared to quite many Linux distros Windows takes ridiculous amount of space. And I have quite bad habit from Windows days giving too much space for root filesystem, just checked that on my current Ubuntu installation, about 14 gigs used and root partition has 100 gigs free space. Maybe I should shrink it quite much, as it just wastes hd space currently...

It can be unwise to leave too small space for system since all things installed via package manager will go to "system" area. Just install something like 0ad (quite nice looking ancient warfare opensource game). Boom. More than half gig of space used - this game got almost 600Mb of resources. Though I thnik 50b would usually do for most users.

[TiberiusDuval]

It can be unwise to leave too small space for system since all things installed via package manager will go to "system" area. Just install something like 0ad (quite nice looking ancient warfare opensource game). Boom. More than half gig of space used - this game got almost 600Mb of resources. Though I thnik 50b would usually do for most users.

Yes, I know that, though 100 gigs free in root system is just waste of space, it quite likely won't fill up. Half of that space to add free home space, and I'd still have quite enough free space in root system for foreseeable use...

[Luke_Wolf]

I don't know how much Win 7 or 8 takes straight after clean install. (My Win7 is nowadays not quite clean, and I did not check up how much it took when I installed it on new machine.) Maybe about same as Vista. Though I remember having disk size problems with Win7 on previous machine. Not with clean install but after installing some needed software and Visual Studio. Even when I did not install Visual Studio on system disk but on other HD it took some space from system disk. And that said system disk was 80gb PATA drive, leading to some nasty problems....

Well installing visual studio doesn't just install visual studio it installs all of the libraries and frameworks that support development that aren't normally included that have to go into the system folder. Also windows keeps copies of all of the update files that it downloads and as a result you need to tell it to clear that cache every so often if you are operating in space constrained settings, as well as clearing out excess recovery state snapshots that it keeps. Although this all said even if you're doing all that I would never install modern windows on a system partition smaller than 200GB (assuming all other programs are being installed to other partitions/disks, and you're saving data to other disks and so on), whereas I don't really even need a quarter of that for my average linux install for the root partition.

[GreatEmerald]

But yes compared to quite many Linux distros Windows takes ridiculous amount of space.

Not to mention their latest partitioning defaults, where they have the boot partition separate. Yet primary. So on MBR systems that means pretty much no more slots left for multiboot. And it refuses to install into GPT if the machine is running BIOS, too.

It might get even worse in the future, as MS seems to be pushing "storage spaces" (LVM) lately (ReFS is only supposed to be used like that). I have no idea how (and whether) that works with multibooting Linux.

[Kano]

You don't need a primary partition for Linux, a logical is enough. All sold new PCs have got GPT, with that you can even boot with PARTUUID.

[GreatEmerald]

You don't need a primary partition for Linux, a logical is enough.

But Windows does. So there's no way to install two Windows and one Linux (or worse, three Windows) with their default scheme.

[TiberiusDuval]

Well installing visual studio doesn't just install visual studio it installs all of the libraries and frameworks that support development that aren't normally included that have to go into the system folder. Also windows keeps copies of all of the update files that it downloads and as a result you need to tell it to clear that cache every so often if you are operating in space constrained settings, as well as clearing out excess recovery state snapshots that it keeps. Although this all said even if you're doing all that I would never install modern windows on a system partition smaller than 200GB (assuming all other programs are being installed to other partitions/disks, and you're saving data to other disks and so on), whereas I don't really even need a quarter of that for my average linux install for the root partition.

Yes, it needed quite thorough tricks to get some free space. And I would not had installed it to such small disk, if there would have been any alternatives. But my computer then had somewhat faulty mobo, corrupting SATA-disks quite fast, and only working PATA drive I had was that 80 gig drive. Most data and software was kept on external 1Tb usb-disk. Nowadays there isn't that problem anymore, as I updated whole computer last summer...