[SOLVED] Gentoo Installation: Partition Issue

[RankkaApina]

I've successfully created a bootable USB and I'm trying to install Gentoo and get rid of the malware on my laptop (i.e. Windows). I've followed the handbook so far and got to the partition bit, but I can't do it the way it describes and I know why, I just don't know how to actually manage it.

If I try the given command

[Hu]

Welcome to the forums.

As I read your output, /dev/sda is your LiveUSB device. /dev/nvme0n1 is a Samsung NVMe drive, with Microsoft Windows on it. If you intend to completely remove Microsoft Windows now, before you have a working Gentoo install, then I think your next step is to use fdisk (or other partitioning tool) as fdisk /dev/nvme0n1, not fdisk /dev/sda as you attempted, and use the partitioning tool to remove the Windows partition (p3) and probably also the p2 and p4 partitions. You may want to keep p1 for use as the EFI boot partition. To be clear, if you remove the p3 partition, you will lose the ability to use the installed Microsoft Windows on this system. Long term, I think this is what you want. Short term, it may not be, if you want to keep Windows usable until you are satisfied that the installed Gentoo works as you desire. Since this is an NVMe device, you probably want to keep the partitions aligned on 1MiB boundaries. The existing p1 and p2 partitions appear to have been done this way. Most modern partitioning tools should strongly encourage you to do this, but it is something to keep in mind as you pick sizes.

Please ask if you require further elaboration.

[RankkaApina]

I think I managed to do that actually. To clarify: I don't want Windows at all, just Gentoo. So, it looks like this now:

[Hu]

Anyone who uses an NVMe drive will have partition names similar to what you got. You will be fine, as long as you use the correct names in /etc/fstab.

You could try to use udev to rename the device, but you won't be using these names much once the system is up. If you really want to avoid these names, you could place an LVM PV in nvme0n1p3, then rely on LVM LVs to hold your data, at which point most of your uses would refer to the LV names, not the partition name. That would replace anything you have put on p3 so far, so you might lose work and need to redo some steps.

[RankkaApina]

Thanks, I think I'll just leave them as is for now, and maybe I forget it It's possible that once I have everything set up and don't need to actively engage with the partitions, it doesn't really matter what they are named...