Why a separate partition at all?

Posted Oct 10, 2025 10:55 UTC (Fri) by gray_-_wolf (subscriber, #131074)
Parent article: Last-minute /boot boost for Fedora 43

It is mentioned that GRUB cannot handle btrfs subvolume, but at that point, why even have a separate partition? On my laptop, /boot is just a directory. What am I missing on by not having a separate partition?

Why a separate partition at all?

Posted Oct 10, 2025 11:50 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

I habitually move the "root" file system to /_r. (Actually if you install Debian to a btrfs it does that out of the box.) Along that I'm using an OS independent /home subvolume and a /btrfs subvolume and the encfs subvolume and … you get the idea.

This makes way the root FS is fairly clean; also I can clone the subvolume and then run a test installation, either directly or via systemd-nspawn, without the test stuff being visible from the root *or* vice versa.

Why a separate partition at all?

Posted Oct 10, 2025 17:06 UTC (Fri) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

Nothing, I do the same. Since the kernel modules are not in /boot anyway there is little advantage to have /boot separated from /.