fdisk instead of cfdisk

[GJones]

In stock Slackware, you partition your disks and then run the installer. In Salix the installer launches cfdisk for you. This is nice; but while cfdisk is relatively user-friendly, it doesn't take care of partition alignment. And unfortunately partition alignment is very important on some recent hard drives (especially SSDs, I think).

fdisk on the other hand (as of the current version, old versions not so much) seems to handle partition alighnment issues without any problems. So it might be better to launch fdisk instead of cfdisk - depending on the hard drive, it could save users a lot of trouble later, even if it's a bit less friendly.

[caitlyn]

If the concern is partition alignment wouldn't parted be a better choice than fdisk? That would give you the flexibility needed and it's certainly more user friendly than fdisk.

[GJones]

I wouldn't call parted (the CLI version) even remotely user-friendly, as (last I checked) it applies changes as you make them - making it much easier to lose data.

[thenktor]

I think both are not suited for an installation disk. If you really need partition allignment use gparted before you start your installation

[JRD]

I agree with Thenktor. Better use a LiveCD that ships Gparted as part of the installation.

[sojurn]

From a not so expert side of things, the cfdisk screen in the text installer (which I prefer over a graphical install) is the one point where I am more than happy to just pass through it quickly. It is sitting on <quit> and I just press return. Which means that I always use gparted in advance to make changes whenever I install a system, regardless.

So same conclusion, albeit for different reasons.

[mimosa]

@sojurn +1

Also very frequently, I am installing to my guest partition; so there's no need to change anything. If it is an install from scratch, I'd certainly use Gparted, even if I didn't want to install from Live for some reason. This is one case where I very quickly got over the urge to use the command line instead of a friendly graphical app.