(very OT) Ideal partition schemes (history of partitioning)

[Polytropon]

On Sun, 30 Aug 2020 05:33:21 +0000, Thomas Mueller wrote:
> from Polytropon (excerpt):
>                         
> > Most multi-OS settings seem to work best with BIOS + MBR.  
> > Boot selection can either happen using a PF key at system
> > startup, if it's more than one disk, or you have a separate
> > software solution, like GRUB or FreeBSD's boot manager, if
> > all systems are on one and the same disk.
> 
> How is that?  It seems to me that GPT would be practically the
> only way for multi-OS.



> Grub 2 can be used to select the partition to boot.

Correct.



> Some or many OSes can not run on a logical partition, only
> a primary partition, using MBR scheme.

That is a restriction that, if I remember correctly, does
not apply to Linux.



> And what if hard disk > 2 TB, or would that be 16 TB in the
> case of 4096-byte sectors?

Yes, that is definitely a special case (which will become
the common case in the future).



> > Within a slide*, you can create multiple partitions. The 
> > common approach today is to have one big / and some swap.
> > The idea of "functional partitioning" typically suggests 
> > a layout like this:
> 
> slide?  Did you mean slice?

Good catch - that was a typical "'d' next to 'c' typo". :-)



> I run several versions of FreeBSD and NetBSD, also need to save
> partitions for Linux and Haiku.
> 
> FreeBSD and NetBSD can't read each other's disklabel or
> bsdlabel-type subpartitions, and sub-partitioning a NetBSD slice
> with disklabel is very tricky, drives me crazy.
> 
> GPT means I never have to deal with traditional BSD disklabels
> any more; I don't run OpenBSD or DragonFlyBSD.

Regarding configuration and number of partitions, GPT is
surely much more convenient than MBR.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...