I hope somebody can help me.
New PC with two SSD. Wanna install Win11 first, which will be used for flashing firmware (the reason to got Windows) and for gaming.
After installing Windows 11 I will run setup for Fedora. At the “something else” aka manual partition part I would do it like this:
On default installation “erase and install Fedora 42” it do it like on the FAQ main page, with 619MB for /boot/efi and 1,07GB for /boot
My question is why I need /boot on a UEFI BIOS? Can I install root and home as ext4 like /boot? What should be the best way to avoid Windows for smashing boot partition with a update?
The /boot partition has the kernel and the needed files to boot the system. the root partition (/ ) has all the other files and folders. Red Hat’s website actually has a pretty informative page on the linux partitions and what they do (i forgot the specifics so that’s where i got the specific answer). The bootloader (grub2) is stored in /boot/efi, which will allow you to pick which OS to boot of course . I dual-boot fedora and win11 on 2 separate SSD’s and I really enjoy it. I don’t think i could go back to having a laptop with less than 2 SSD slots. it also lets me easily try out other linux distro’s on bare metal, which is actually what allowed me to determine that fedora was the best distro for me. you might face issues with secure boot, specifically when it comes to proprietary kernel modules (for me it’s Nvidia) but there are ways to address that, and having 2 separate drives has helped me avoid any issues with win11 destroying my linux partitions,even after many win11 updates. FIle explorer doesn’t even recognize my linux drive. Encrypting my linux partitions likely has helped me too. I’m pretty new to the linux, so please correct me if i made any errors.
My apologies, i must have misread the question (got /boot and /boot/efi mixed up). then in that case you don’t strictly need /boot as a separate partition, unless you want to encrypt your drive (the files on /boot and /boot/efi cant be encrypted, like the kernel, otherwise it wont boot). For me personally i always encrypt root, so i need a separate /boot partition for the encrypted system to boot. Also, and this is also just me personally, i very much like to have my options open, and since the /boot partition doesn’t take up much space, to avoid possibly messing up anything i just follow the recommended defaults (in case there is anything i didnt consider in installation that can bite me in the future). Aside from that, you dont strictly need a separate /boot partition if you already have a /boot/efi partition.
Also in my research i saw about some complications in regards to BTRFS (which is the default for Fedora workstation IIRC) and not having a separate /boot partition but like Villy mentioned it should still work. Still, if having a separate /boot partition helps makes things go more smoothly with BTRFS, in addition to what i mentioned earlier, then it’s essentially a move with little downside for noticable benefit. One great thing about linux though is the level of customization, so if you still prefer to keep the /boot partition, for any reason if at all, then more power to you (specially if you only have a small amout of total storage space to deal with and dont need or care about encrypting the root partition.)
I’m glad to hear that i might have helped, even if it’s in a small way. Out of curiosity though, which filesystem will you be using and why? different file systems have their advantages and use cases, and even though i typically recommend and use BTRFS for Fedora Workstation and its spins, i know that it’s not everone’s cup of tea and not ideal for every use case. Ive personally found it easier to use, specially because you dont have to individually allocate space for root, /home and /var, it treats them all as one which is good for saving drive space, and making the most out of the drive space. only /boot, /boot/efi and swap require their own partitions with BTRFS. Plus there’s also snapshots, compression and online shrinking (so if you want to shrink the volume of your fedora system on the drive, you can do it on fedora itself), which is handy if you want to make space on the linux ssd to try out another linux distro alongside Fedora. It’s like a filesystem and LVM combined.