How to install manjaro with BTRFS file system, with zstd (2) compression in Calamares for UEFI?

This is probably a dumb question, but i didn’t find an answer anywhere.
How to install manjaro with BTRFS file system, with zstd (2) compression in Calamares for UEFI?

Welcome to the forum. :slight_smile:

You should choose custom partitioning, and then the option for btrfs should become available. The default compression level for zstd is 3, by the way. Anything less isn’t really worth the effort.

Now, I have not installed any recent Manjaro images, and so I don’t know whether Calamares will offer to use zstd compression for btrfs partitions, but switching over to zstd later is either way as simple as changing the mount options in /etc/fstab. As the system gets updated over time and packages get replaced, most of the files will be moved from lzo compression to zstd compression anyway.

So it’s not possible to install it with zstd compression from the get go in Calamares? (and by not possible i mean not simple)
I have an old netbook with 32gb MMC hard drive, so any space that i can save would be greatly appreciated

I do not know. It might be in the most recent versions, but my installation on this machine dates back to April 2019, and at the time it wasn’t supported yet.

32 GiB is a bit on the skinny side, especially once you start adding software and saving data, because not everything is eligible for compression. For instance, JPEGs and most video and audio formats are already compressed, and attempting to compress them any further may actually create a larger file.

You might get away with 32 GiB at first ─ in fact, you probably will ─ but it won’t be long anymore before you run out of space.

The good news is that you can split off certain parts of the installation onto other storage media. So if you have an external HDD or SSD that’s always connected and powered on, then you could put your /home directory on that, and maybe even /var. That would certainly make a big difference.

It didn’t even cross my mind to split the installation like that, thank you for the good idea!
There’s an 32gb SD card that i can put into it, so i’ll do that.

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Here’s my own partition table, as an example.

Filesystem     Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1      vfat      511M  544K  511M   1% /boot/efi
/dev/sda2      ext4      488M   63M  390M  14% /boot
/dev/sda3      btrfs     1.0G   27M  767M   4% /
/dev/sda4      btrfs      22G  7.1G   15G  34% /usr
/dev/sda5      btrfs     512M  3.4M  499M   1% /usr/local
/dev/sda6      btrfs     2.0G  107M  1.7G   6% /opt
/dev/sda8      btrfs     400G   72G  328G  18% /srv
/dev/sda9      btrfs     450G  2.8G  446G   1% /home
/dev/sda11     btrfs      20G  3.4G   17G  18% /var

Do however note that putting /usr on a separate partition is going to require an extra step during installation, because I don’t think it’s supported out-of-the-box yet. :wink:

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