I have been using Manjaro KDE on a VM and I officially want to switch to it now. Although I do not have much knowledge of Linux and stuff. Basically I’m a NOOB.
As I said I’ve been using Manjaro KDE in VM and want to switch to it completely. But before that I have a few questions. I have been reading on the forum for some time but still wanted to confirm one last time, I hope I won’t sound stupid😅
So I have an Acer Aspire A515-51G with HDD and SSD and Hybrid Graphics.
As per the reading I can run Hybrid graphics without any issues using “prime-run appname” from terminal, which is fine.
Now the doubt I have is regarding SSD + HDD. So in a post it was mentioned about Windows drives partition and Linux drive. Windows has partitions like C, D etc…, while Linux does not.
I did not understand much about it. But I just want to know will I have to tweak for my laptop to setup both SSD + HDD to work at the same time as I will be installing Manjaro on my SSD as the sole OS(I will be removing windows completely which is installed in SSD) and I use HDD only as a storage device.
Specs:- I have a decent laptop.
Storage:- 256GB m.2 Nvme SSD + 1TB 5400 rpm HDD.
Graphics:- intel integrated 6xx + Nvidia MX150 2gb
Long story short:- After installing will I face any issues with dual drives i.e…, SSD + HDD and hybrid graphics.
P.S:- Excuse me for my English if I had made any mistakes.
I think the main difference between Windows and Linux regarding partitions is that Windows mounts all of them automatically, while Linux only do so with partitions configured as such, the rest usually still being accessible from file managers and mounted on-demand.
This may or may not be of importance, depending on where you want your /home folder.
If you want it in the system partition – which is default AFAIK – and keep the HDD for extra storage on-demand, there’s nothing to do.
If you want another partition to be mounted as it, you will need to define that partition as such during the installation.
Since you mention switching from Windows, i suppose all your partitions are formatted as NTFS. I’d be careful, since lately there has been more issues mentioned regarding this file system.
To recall, NTFS support in Linux came through reverse-engineering, which means it is less than perfect. I’d recommend formatting your partitions to one with better support – ext4, exFAT, XFS, Btrfs… You’ll need a spare drive for temporarily saving your data, since formatting a partition erases all data on it!
As @maycne.sonahoz mentioned, In the intallation procedure (specially in the gui version) there’s a section where you define the formatting and the partitions.
In the Wiki is talked about (I suppose your notebook is UEFI Boot):
In regards to Hybrid Graphics It really depends on what you want to do and if the non-free drivers support what you want to do, egg: Secondo monitor to expand screen.
I also opened a thread here about those conserns of mine here:
There’s lot’s of info about hybrid graphics here and a lot of links for you read into and see which suits best your needs and how to make it work.
Finally, It should install without any problems at first, but if you want to extract its full potential then you need to look into those artitles and threads.
I have a not very good english I’m not a native speaker either, but you can communitcate well what you want and provided hardware info that’s what is required to support.
Thank you all for the info provided. I was a bit skeptical, but what I have heard is true. Linux community is really great when it comes to helping. I’m glad that I’ll soon be joining this community❤️
And looks like I need to take care of partition while installing Manjaro on my machine.
I’ll dig a bit into MBR, GPT to see if it is the case in Linux or it is just a windows thing again😅
Okay, recently something happened automatically(I don’t have anything to do with it) and I lost my Windows operating system from my machine. Now my machine says no OS found🤦🏻♂️
Now I believe this would be the best time to install Manjaro, as I already lost my data.
So according to you what should I choose during installation? Erase all data was something that I was thinking. And if I select that option, will it auto format to one of the favorable formats? And as I have 2 drives, will I need to keep both of’em in the same format ex: exFAT or they can be different?
Thank you for replying, although I have installed Manjaro KDE Plasma by this time. This is far better than Win 10, I did have a trouble understanding few things but got 'em at the end. Although I am missing one application from windows… Let’s see if I can get it working on Linux anytime soon.
