BTRFS best format? With or without Swap?

Support Installation and Configuration
1

What is actually the best way to install ParrotOS 4.7 mate or KDE if it should run on a second partition next to Windows 10 pro?

My Thinkpad E495 is configured with 8GB Ram, Ryzen 5 and a 256GB PCIe NVME SSD.

The 256GB SSD is partitioned with Windows 10 pro as the first partition with 175GB + free non partitioned space.

If I install ParrotOS, what is best now?

  • ParrotOS on second partition or wipe the whole SSD and first install Parrot and afterwards Windows 10 pro?

  • Which partition format is best for ParrotOS? Ext4 or BTRFS?

  • I read in the forum that BTFS installation doesn’t create a Swap partition because Swap is not useful with BTRFS. Should I create a Swap or not?

  • Which size should the Swap partition have?

veo

What version of Parrot are you running? (include version (e.g. 4.6), edition(e.g. Home//KDE/OVA, etc.), and architecture (currently we only support amd64)

What method did you use to install Parrot? (Debian Standard / Debian GTK / parrot-experimental)

Configured to multiboot with other systems? (yes / no)

If there are any similar issues or solutions, link to them below:

If there are any error messages or relevant logs, post them below:

2

The filesystem doesn’t matter unless as you don’t choose something stupid like fat32. BTRFS isn’t designed to make use of swap space(doesn’t mean your computer won’t if you give it some). The thing is modern computers don’t really need to make much use of swap space so it’s really not necessary.

3

windows before parrot

4

This is true. I see no problem with Windows first or Parrot first or any OS first.

It supports from Parrot 4.7 (parrot 4.6 doesn’t support).

I personally recommend if you are using a laptop or old PC. Sometime LInux can have memory leak bug from service / application and swap can save you from that. In other cases, SWAP isn’t really necessary. Linux always pushes your data into RAM cache so your SWAP will be used and if you run the system whole day it will be a little slower than fresh boot (that was my situation).

5

Alright, so I got this right?

  • a swap partition for a BTRFS running system does not have any negative effects on the performance.

I have a pretty new laptop but right now it only has 8GB Ram on it. If I decide to create a swap partition, what size is recommended? On google I find different answers here like:
GB RAM + 2GB = 10GB SWAP

other sources again say GB RAM x 2 = 16GB SWAP

veo

6

My opinion is: if your system is not low-end, you won’t feel different.

If you are not running server, you don’t have to spend so much space to swap like this. I always set 3 or 4 GB for my 8gb Ram laptop.

7

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