I wanted to install fedora XFCE on an old machine and I was wondering how could I install it on ext4. I know that I should select Launch storage editor in the Installation method page, but I’m not sure how to partition.
This is based on the assumption that you are booting with uefi.
The standard size for /boot is 2GB (ext4) and for /boot/efi it is 600MB (fat32).
If you allocate 50 - 100GB for / and the remaining disk space for /home it should be great.
Note that if the root partition is ext4 then /boot as a separate partition is not required. The default partitioning makes /boot as ext4 with both / and /home as btrfs. Btrfs is difficult for grub to access when booting so /boot as a separate ext4 partition solves that issue.
If you are doing legacy (MBR) boot this is not quite the same.
I had to do this a few days ago, but with Fedora KDE. It’s possible that I’m an idiot and there’s a simpler way, but I couldn’t see how to create the partitions in the installer, so here’s what I did:
To partition the disk, I ran the KDE Partition Editor from the Live USB iso. I assume there’s something like this for XFCE, perhaps gparted (GNU partition editor).
First I created a partition of type VFAT (fat32) of about 630M for /boot/efi. I determined this size based on what the installer would have done had I chosen a default installation with btrfs.
Then I created a swap partition of the same size as RAM, for use in hibernation.
Finally I created and formatted the required ext4 partitions: one for /boot of about 2.2G (again determined by what the default installer would have done); one for / of about 60G; and one for /home that used the remaining space.
Back in the installer, I launched the Storage Editor, and set the mount points for the various partitions. The installer would not let me continue until I had specified mount points for /boot, /boot/efi, and /. I also set the mount point for /home, but I think the installer would probably have let me get away without doing this.