What size boot partition does elementary OS 6 Beta need?

Question

Upon trying to install elementary OS 6 Beta, the installer informs me that the partition I used for boot with Hera is too small.

This is on a 2012 Apple MacBook Air (MacBookAir5,2) set up for dual boot. When I installed that, it seems the hidden FAT32 recovery partition (209.7 MB) was used. (For now, Mac OS X remains my daily driver, with elementary as a secondary…for now.)

Now, however, the 6 Beta installer says that's too small. What size boot partition does 6 need?

(As an aside, was it a terrible idea to let the Hera installer use this hidden recovery partition for boot? Should I instead create a dedicated boot partition for Linux alone?)

Answer 1

I needed to create three partitions to install eOS 6 beta on a 2015 MacBook Pro with dual booting: boot, swap, and the main partition. Based on a discussion on an AskUbuntu forum, I decided that 550MB would be a good recommended size for the boot partition when setting up dual boot.

If you have plenty of space available, you can go up to 1GB to be completely in the clear.

Answer 2

209MB for a /boot partition is a little tight. This could make it rather difficult to install kernel updates. Some people are able to get by with a small /boot, though I tend to keep mine at 1GB in size. This allows for a good deal of breathing room so long as you can afford to forfeit the storage space.

As for your second question, it's not a terrible idea to use the recovery partition on a Mac if you are not using macOS very often or do not plan on upgrading the OS. Worst case scenario is that, if you need to re-install macOS from scratch for whatever reason, you make use of the Internet Recovery feature by pressing ⌘ + Option + Alt + R at boot time. Restoring macOS will blow away all partitions on the storage device, though, so be sure to have good backups 👍🏻

Answer 3

Answer:

There are three sizes, which can be specified by kernel command-line arguments.

1. 32 MB minimum size required for boot loader configuration files, so the partition must at least be this large.
2. 200 MB preferred because it gives a little extra space to work with.
3. 400MB maximum allowed if the installer insists on using GPT partitioning scheme with that particular size of device (or smaller). You may change the value of LC_ALL before beginning installing Elementary OS 6 Beta that will set any locale and regional settings you wish. Furthermore, clear your browser cache after changing regional setting to use what you want (Ex: en-US for United States & English) for