Help about install

MarkoB

Hi all,

I am new here. Never used Solus before, I heard a lot of good about it. So I decided to try it. Before I used Arch based distros and Ubuntu. Now it is a time for a new one 🙂

I have GPT layout, uefi, will use whole disk.
As I saw on wiki, I dont need efi/boot partition for boot, as I will use whole disk ?

Also I want separate home partition. For that I need to make it in Gparted and than just choose /home during installation ?

About swap, I want to use swap file (it suppose to be faster and better for SSD), how to do that ?

Backup, what is the best way? I saw here on forum that Btrfs isnt supported. So no go with Timeshift and snapshots..Other options ?

That is it for now..when I install it, maybe I will have new questions 🙂

Thanks

Marko

davidjharder

Hi @MarkoB, welcome to the forums.

It sounds like you have read the help page already but just in case: https://getsol.us/articles/installation/disks/en/

Because you want to separate your home and system partitions, you will have to create the EFI partition too.

Starting from an un-allocated disk:

Create a GPT partition table
Create a EFI partition, as shown on the help page (512MB, formatted fat32, set proper flags)
Create ext4 formatted partitions for your system and home mount points
Optional: create a swap partition (you can create a swapfile once your installation is working.
Launch the installer, at mount assigning page assign your system and home mounts to their partitions, leave the EFI partition unassigned
On the next page, the installer should already have "Install bootloader" checked and your EFI partition selected. If it doesn't then either your EFI partition is not formatted correctly OR you did not boot the ISO in UEFI mode.

As to backup, I use vorta but you should look at some old discussions where people explain their thoughts more.

Hope that helps!

Edit: To create aswapfile you can follow this guide: https://linuxize.com/post/create-a-linux-swap-file/

MarkoB

davidjharder Thank you a lot.

I followed your instructions, and now I am on fresh installed Solus 🙂 it looks so nice.

Now I need to learn how to use terminal for update, installing apps etc, because I can see, it is totally different than Arch 🙂

CorvusRuber

MarkoB Now I need to learn how to use terminal for update

sudo eopkg up, that's it. Never hold back any package and always update everything and you're good.
sudo eokpg it $whatever to install $whatever package you'll need
Since you're freshly installed, update and reboot before installing anything else.

pomon

I just want to remind you that there is a software center and you can update and install graphically

MarkoB

Thanks again guys. Will take a look on both 🙂