Plan partition sizes for root, home, var and swap based on total disk capacity.
Server and desktop workloads have different storage access patterns, so this planner allocates disk space using different percentage splits for each: servers typically need a larger /var (logs, databases, container images, package caches) relative to /home, since most server systems have few or no interactive user accounts, while desktops need a much larger /home to store user documents, media and application data. A minimum floor size is enforced per partition regardless of the percentage-derived figure, since a tiny /tmp or root partition can cause practical problems even on a small disk.
Partition size
partition_size = max(minimum_size, total_disk × allocation_percent)
/var holds logs, package manager caches, mail spools, container images and often database data directories — all of which grow continuously on a running server. Desktops generate comparatively little of this data since they run fewer background services and rarely host databases or long-running application logs.
Separate partitions (or LVM logical volumes) for /var, /home and /tmp isolate failure domains — a runaway log file filling /var won't take down the root filesystem needed to boot and run core services — while LVM adds the flexibility to resize volumes later without repartitioning, which is why many production deployments combine both approaches.
Some swap is still recommended even on high-memory systems, both as a safety net against unexpected memory spikes and because the kernel can use it to move rarely-accessed pages out of RAM — see the Swap Size Calculator for RAM-based sizing guidance rather than a fixed percentage of total disk.