I want to install Manjaro OS on SSD and the programs on HDD

[Undefined]

My laptop contains 256GB of SSD and 1TB of HDD, I am not sure how much space I should give to Manjaro OS from SSD

[linux-aarhus]

You cannot proritize app installation to go to another disk.

You have two options

Either

1. mount /home to a partition on your second device

Or

2. symlink important folders from home to a separate partition

[Mirdarthos]

@linux-aarhus

You cannot proritize app installation to go to another disk.

Actually, you can. But not like you do in Windows, and it can get very complicated very easily.

Have a look at:

[Tip] Root filesystem nearly full but got a spare partition sitting around? Split off some stuff!

Difficulty: ★★★☆☆ Introduction As you should all already know by now, GNU/Linux is a FLOSS variant of the UNIX operating system design, and UNIX does not know the concept of drive letters, nor does it approach storage from the vantage of having different volumes. Instead, everything is mounted into a uniform directory hierarchy, so that regardless of what physical medium any particular group of files resides on ─ even if this physical medium is actually located in another computer across the…

[Aragorn]

[Tutorial] Working with additional 'drives'

Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆ 1. INTRODUCTION Microsoft Windows started its life as a graphical user interface on top of MS-DOS, a 16-bit single-user, single-tasking operating system that in turn originated as 86DOS, an unauthorized 16-bit rewrite (by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer) of Digital Research’s originally 8-bit CP/M operating system. Both CP/M and MS-DOS were at the time developed for computers that did not support any other storage media than floppy disks. Considering this legacy, Microso…

[Tutorial] Understanding and working with UNIX filesystems and permissions

Difficulty: ★★★☆☆ Note: This post is meant as a tutorial. Please do not post on this thread regarding any problems you’re having with permissions, but start a new thread instead. Thank you. PREAMBLE: THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND If you are new to the world of GNU/Linux ─ and especially if you come from the Microsoft Windows ecosystem ─ then you will undoubtedly already have noticed that GNU/Linux handles permissions and storage volumes quite differently from what you might be used to…

[Tip] Root filesystem nearly full but got a spare partition sitting around? Split off some stuff!

Difficulty: ★★★☆☆ Introduction As you should all already know by now, GNU/Linux is a FLOSS variant of the UNIX operating system design, and UNIX does not know the concept of drive letters, nor does it approach storage from the vantage of having different volumes. Instead, everything is mounted into a uniform directory hierarchy, so that regardless of what physical medium any particular group of files resides on ─ even if this physical medium is actually located in another computer across the…

[Mirdarthos]

@linux-aarhus

symlink important folders from home to a separate partition

Or use bind mounts

[root tip] [How To] Use systemd to mount ANY device

Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆ Disk device recognition Manjaro uses udev (see Arch Wiki) to load devices at boot time. The loading of devices is arbitrary and therefore you cannot predict which device will be available at a given path. But static device names do exist and you can assign specific locations to your device and thus ensure e.g. scripts will work as expected. What to learn Overview of system mount units Structure and Content of a mount unit Mount at boot (immediate mount) Mount on demand (m…

[leledumbo]

@Undefined

I am not sure how much space I should give to Manjaro OS from SSD

Considering my ESP is 107MB in size out of 256MB and I have 4 OSes installed, I think 128MB is a safe bet for you (97MB is Lenovo, Microsoft and Insyde only God knows why putting whatever sh*t there, Manjaro barely eats 160KB).

Then swap, if you don’t need hibernation and you believe you will never be out of RAM, can be 0. Otherwise, if you need hibernation it should be as many as your RAM though 1.5-2x is better.

Give the rest to Manjaro, hopefully that’s still over 200GB so you can have many programs installed, including big ones.

As for your wish in the title, others have explained. The easy answer is “you can’t” while the hard one is “you can, but it will be hell quickly”, as most apps follow the filesystem hierarchy standard (FHS), where a single package may have files scattered over different directories instead of installed to its own directory. This is a problem distros like GoboLinux, and alternative package management like Flatpak, Snap and AppImage try to solve, albeit the FHS remains untouched.