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I am about to install Ubuntu 16.04 on a laptop. It's an UEFI system, with Windows 10 on a GPT disk. I am doing the partitioning manually to get the partition layout I want.

I am not very familiar with UEFI systems. But judging by what I have read so far, it calls for an EFI System Partition (EFS) as the first partition on a GPT disk. Is this like a boot partition?

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So should I leave it on default setting and let it install the boot loader on sda, a là MBR style? Or should I do something else here? Put it on sda1/ESP or even on a separate boot partition?

Samir
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  • other comment... in looking at the picture you posted with your manual partitions... they look kind of off... could you either post an updated gparted screenshot of your layout, or describe why you did it the way you did? Any particular reason for a separate / and /home? How much physical RAM do you have? I ask because of the swap. Cheers, Al – heynnema Aug 28 '16 at 23:24
  • @heynnema What do you mean by "off"? I'm not sure what you mean by "did it the way you did"? How exactly is that, and what about it? Yes, the reason is flexibility by OS and user data separation. What about swap? The RAM is 8 GB. – Samir Aug 28 '16 at 23:39
  • Just for the record, I have left it on default. Installation completed, Ubuntu boots OK and so does Windows. What would have been the result if I had chosen sda1? Would that have caused Windows to stop booting? What is the benefit of choosing sda1 over sda for boot loader, if any? – Samir Aug 28 '16 at 23:43
  • relax. Since you didn't post a gparted screenshot for me to look at... or didn't describe "user data separation"... I can't fully comment. I just looks like you're wasting a lot of hard disk space, and your partition sizes don't seem the "best" size. Cheers, Al – heynnema Aug 28 '16 at 23:48
  • Sorry, but I am unable to post a new screenshot right now. What I meant was partitioning. Partitioning is a type of data separation. You know?... user data on a separate partition? Okay... so what do you think is the best partition size for me? – Samir Aug 29 '16 at 00:11
  • If you are referring to unallocated spaces, I can tell you that those are intentional. It's again about flexibility. It's not waste of space in my world. By that standard, free space on any partition any given time is a waste. But you can't live on the edge either and keep running out of disk space... what for? Optimal performance?... The unallocated spaces give me flex so I can more easily resize and move partitions. As for performance it's usually considered best practice to constrain the data with a small partition. That may not be relevant for SSD drives, but it was with HDD drives. – Samir Aug 29 '16 at 00:14
  • So to sum it up. I used a 1.5 factor for the Swap size. That's 1.5 by 8, which is 12. I dual boot with Windows 10. I need no more than 10 GB for root, plus a 20% slack. I used 12 GB unallocated spaces for flexible resizing and moving later on. I separated out the /home because I store my files there and I don't want to lose them if I decide to reformat the root partition for whatever the reason. Of course, that's not my only safety. I will set up backup as well. That's it! Nothing more to it. Hope that clears up some of your questions. Oh and yes, those size numbers are in MB but I used MiB. – Samir Aug 29 '16 at 00:27

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