Ext2/3/4 is interesting where the number of INodes (individual actual files) is determined at formatting time. And if there's extra space after the partition, extending the is a command away.

Compare that to FAT16/32 which have a fixed number of max sectors and if not the max number of sectors is exhausted for the FS, you can extend to that. Extending beyond that tends to be increasing the sector size, rather than the max number of sectors/files.

Thanks.

EasyEffects looks interesting, may eventually be a semi decent replacement for Equalizer APO on Windows.

Parabolic seems interesting as well but if someone wants to download a video from youtube, Freetube does the job, albeit without many options.
I find it very simple, specially for games.
It has tons of options, including a handy "add desktop entry" wich on Linux Mint creates a entry on the start menu.

This can bite you in some situations. For example:
* Create an ext4 partition large enough to hold the Gentoo portage tree (but not too big). Use default formatting settings.
* Download the portage tree.
* Attempt to unpack it into that partition.

Doing this will result in the unpacking failing, not because of space, but because the filesystem has run out of inodes.

(The relevant property, here, is that Gentoo's portage tree consists of lots of small files, and as a result inodes run out before space does. The work-around is that you need to not use default settings, and instead specify extra inodes when creating the filesystem, or alternatively find another filesystem that doesn't have this issue.)

Mhmm. I thought i saw the default was suppose to be like 200,000 inodes; Though that might have been for a 4Gb partition, don't know what it decides on for those.

Yep. Though using a tmpfs which would have unlimited files (and a max memory space) would solve part of that, at least during unpacking and processing. If the package demands to extract all those files to the partition in question. Don't know. Could also mount a new drive to the problem directory and move the files out afterwards. But that's a lot of extra work. Better to have a few too many inodes than too few.

Drawbacks:
* The filesystem won't persist over reboots with a tmpfs, and re-downloading them every update will slow things down..
* If the portage tree doesn't fit into RAM, there could be an issue.

One possibility, though it has the drawback of being more complex, would be something like this:
* Store the portage tree in a squashfs filesystem. This is a single file on the local disk, so it only uses 1 inode there, and also takes significantly less space. (squashfs, I believe, even compresses things like inodes.)
* When it comes time to update the tree, mount the tree, then mount a tmpfs overlay over it. Now it's possible to write to the tree, though the changes don't persist.
* At some point after the update, a cron job (or similar) could re-compress the new tree. Save this to a separate squashfs image, then rename the file to atomically overwrite the old squashfs image. This could, for example, be done at shutdown, if the system is regularly powered off. )In case of a power outage, one could just re-update from the internet.)

. . .

I have used Linux Mint for several years and have my brother and sister using it as well. It works excellent for me/us with no negatives toward other Linux versions. On a total of four Windows (7,8,8,10) laptops I have Mint installed as the default boot on external WD 1TB USB drives. I can still boot to windows at startup if necessary.

The reason for my post is to insure a new user is aware of the methods to recover Linux after a crash. My brother crashed a few times due to his impatience with version updates. When he crashed his install he was sure all was lost based on past Windows crashes.

This only refers to my use of Linux Mint but other versions may be similar.

I always install from a bootable USB stick. As my installs update to newer versions I download/create a new bootable USB of the new version. This gives me a way to boot to a Linux Mint live session if a crash occurs. You may need to enter your computer setup and set "boot to USB" as the first boot option as you did when you first installed Linux. You could also use a DVD if you prefer but a dedicated USB is easier IMHO. Doing this is the first step for way to recover your install.

https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/burn.html

Once you have Linux Mint up and running open Software Manager and install Timeshift. Create a backup and set the backup to run on a regular basis. I keep a max of 5 backups and do a manual after a kernel update. There a lots of articles on setting up Timeshift. After a manual backup I usually delete all but the two last backups after doing the manual to save space. This is the second step to recovering your install.

https://www.reallinuxuser.com/how-to-use-timeshift-to-backup-and-restore-linux-mint/

On crash, boot to the USB live session, install Timeshift in the live session then find you latest backup on your Linux install drive. My backups are usually located at /dev/sdb1 on the drive Linux Mint is installed on. Select the last backup and hit Restore. Be patient, it takes time. When complete (follow any instructions displayed) remove USB and reboot (set first boot device if needed). This method has worked for me the few times I've needed a recover.

If your install boots but seems unstable you have another option to go to Software Manager and install and run Boot Repair but that's another story.

Hope this helps remove some of despair of crashing a system you just started to explore. Enjoy Linux regardless. =)

No worries. Definitely check Easy Effects out, it might surprise you. I do like it much better than Equalizer APO, but my opinion is mostly based on design rather than features (even though I wouldn't say it's lacking on that aspect either).

I didn't know about Freetube, thanks for mentioning it!

I wasn't implying the tmpfs was the final solution, only for extracting/preparing it so your main drive doesn't run out of inodes.

But if it's a lot of small or redundant files, making a very large zram partition could handle it as the contents are always compressed (and blocks of zero are not stored at all). But again if you don't have enough ram even this becomes an issue.

Though i'm not familiar with the portage tree you're talking about;.

Now we're talking a lot closer to Slax and overlapping filesystems territory. I have a particular love for Squashfs. One curious thing on Slax is the layout of the overlays, one directory of 'changes' refers to anything not mounted to a drive (and presumably floating in ram), so you could have sorta an incremental. Saving the changes as a secondary file to overlay would speed up and prevent tons of redundant work until it reaches an acceptable size, then merging that with the original data would likely work quite well.

It's an important part of Gentoo's package manager (which is, of course, called "portage"). Basically, it contains recipes for building every single package in the Gentoo repository, including instructions on downloading the source, building, and installing it. (Or, at least I *think* that's what's contained in it.) If you want to install software in a Gentoo system, or to update currently installed software, you need an up-to-date version of the tree. (There is, of course, a command that will update the tree for you.) The tree is only used by the package manager, and therefore doesn't need to be in RAM when package updating is not currently being done; hence you'll probably want to store it on disk.