[ale] to lvm or not lvm is my dillema

[DJPfulio at jdpfu.com]

It depends on you, your needs and whether you want lots of control.  With control comes complexity and flexibility.  Only you can decide.

Think of it this way.
LVM is like a transmission in an 18-wheel truck.  When you need it, you really need it, but you'll have to learn how to use it.

If you just want to get into a little sedan, perhaps an automatic transmission is more desirable, but you lose flexibility that you may never need and you certainly avoid the added complexity.

If you were trying to become a full-time server admin for a new career, I'd say learn LVM and ZFS. They are good skills to have.  LVM on Linux is modeled after the UNIX LVM version which are mostly stolen from Veritas. If you already know Veritas Volume management, then the transition will be easy.

But if you don't know Veritas and have little interest in being a Linux Server admin, then LVM may just bring more complexity that you don't care to have.

If you are still curious, why not setup a virtual machine and choose LVM during the install?  Try it out, don't just accept the defaults.  Actually use it for common things like expanding and reducing file systems and a mock migration to another system.  Migrations are one thing that LVM makes really easy - it is almost laughable how much easier migrations can be from a 256G HDD to a HDD that is larger - all with very little downtime.  The system can be running full speed during the migration and if you don't change the boot partition, you don't need to reboot at all.   In a business, this can be extremely useful.  Most home users don't care much about having to reboot 5 times in a day.

Always remember, just because LVM will let you do something, that doesn't mean it is a good idea.  People do dumb things with LVM all the time.  I have.  And I have the data loss history to prove it.  But I've learned from those mistakes and can't imagine setting up a new physical storage system without LVM.

Here's an LVM layout on 1 of my systems (not showing the other 16TB of storage), just the core stuff:
NAME                              TYPE FSTYPE       SIZE FSAVAIL FSUSE% LABEL       MOUNTPOINT
nvme0n1                           disk            931.5G
├─nvme0n1p1                       part ext2           1M
├─nvme0n1p2                       part vfat          50M   43.8M    12%             /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p3                       part ext4         700M  304.2M    47%             /boot
└─nvme0n1p4                       part LVM2_membe 930.8G
   ├─vg01-swap01                   lvm  swap         4.1G                            [SWAP]
   ├─vg01-root01                   lvm  ext4          35G   24.5G    23%             /
   ├─vg01-var01                    lvm  ext4          20G    8.6G    51%             /var
   ├─vg01-tmp01                    lvm  ext4           4G    3.6G     2% tmp01       /tmp
   ├─vg01-home01                   lvm  ext4          40G   23.8G    35% home01      /home
   ├─vg01-libvirt--01              lvm  ext4         137G    2.8G    98% libvirt--01 /var/lib/libvir
   ├─vg01-lxd--containers--01      lvm                30G
   ├─vg01-usrv2404                 lvm                15G
   └─vg01-TinyCore                 lvm                 1G

Note how I don't have the all the available storage assigned?  That's an important aspect for LVM's flexibility.  Also, I use LVM LVs to directly provide block storage to virtual machines. That storage isn't mounted on the host computer.  That's why the last 3 rows don't have full information. The host computer doesn't know what is happening inside those LVs.

LVs, as shown above, can be thought of as really smart partitions. LVs can be modified while the file system inside them is active and busy.

If that layout seems overly complex, that isn't wrong.  But the specific things I've split off into their own LVs generally use specific, different, mount options, to provide a slightly more secure base-OS.

In the end, it is your choice.


> ---- On Thu, 01 Jan 2026 16:44:05 -0500 *Narahari Lakshminarayana via Ale <ale at ale.org>* wrote ----
> 
>     Friends:
> 
>     I am installing DEBIAN on my ASUS motherboard based desktop.
>     I am at the stage where it is asking me to partition the disks.
> 
>     NVMe-1 blank 256GB
>     NVMe-2 Window 11 exists from broken laptop 256GB
> 
>     Does it make sense to install LVM ?