2

After installation of MX Linux 19.2 KDE occupied space on root partition was 7.8GB. It is totally incoherent with user manual suggesting to leave at least 5GB for root partition (but if you plan to install many apps safer choice would be 10GB). I am new to linux, did I install it wrong (however I did not have many choices during installation)?

PS. I tried to ask this question on MX Linux forum, however registering there seems impossible (no support, no activation email from them, I t some list of spammers etc. no idea how they work)

    sudo du -x / | sort -n | tail -30    :

184108  /usr/lib/jvm  
191708  /usr/lib/modules/5.6.0-2-amd64/kernel/drivers  
226404  /usr/bin  
233688  /opt/google/chrome  
233692  /opt/google  
235536  /usr/lib/libreoffice/program  
243380  /usr/share/doc  
245532  /opt/brave.com/brave  
245536  /opt/brave.com  
272072  /usr/lib/modules/5.6.0-2-amd64/kernel  
285020  /usr/lib/modules/5.6.0-2-amd64  
285024  /usr/lib/modules  
295224  /usr/share/skypeforlinux  
306772  /var/lib/apt/lists  
306880  /var/lib/apt  
307144  /usr/lib/libreoffice  
324140  /var/cache/apt/archives  
372644  /usr/share/icons  
419248  /var/cache/apt  
501792  /var/lib  
579316  /var/cache  
581604  /usr/lib/firmware  
645284  /usr/share/locale  
650720  /opt  
1121660 /var  
1400148 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu  
2695148 /usr/share  
3543072 /usr/lib  
6713308 /usr  
8692636 /
Kusalananda
  • 320,670
  • 36
  • 633
  • 936
Luca Twardowski
  • 21
  • 3

1 Answers1

1

7.8 GiB sounds ok to me. Software got bigger in past few years and full fat desktop environments like GNOME or KDE with all the default applications are big.

I'm not using MX Linux, but default installation of Fedora Workstation with GNOME is 6.7 GiB. The 5 GiB recommendation for root partition is very small, it should be at least 25 GiB and I'd recommend 50 GiB (I'm currently using 37 GiB in my root filesystem and I'm not doing anything crazy).

Also from the du output I see you have Chrome, Brave and Skype installed. Third party applications like these are usually shipped as one big binary blobs and can take hundreds of MiBs. Disk space is cheap and programmers are lazy :-)

If you want to reduce the size, I'd recommend uninstalling some applications you are not using (LibreOffice is quite big and most people use only Writer) or clear some cache (there are tools for that like BleachBit, but that's not really useful for fresh installation) but if you want to go below 10 or even 5 GiB, you'll need to install something lighter than KDE like Xfce or LXDE.

Vojtech Trefny
  • 16,922
  • 6
  • 24
  • 48
  • Thanks! Wish I knew it before partitioning and installation but no problem. BTW it is from current MX Manual still shining on my desktop: "The installed base size is a little under 2.5GB, so we recommend a minimum of 5GB to allow for basic functions. (...) This minimum size will not allow you to install many programs, and may cause difficulty doing upgrades, running VirtualBox, etc. Recommended size for normal use is therefore 10 GB." – Luca Twardowski Nov 14 '20 at 13:08