Partition size not accurate

[Lonewolf71]

Hello guys.
I just installed Debian Gnome on my Laptop and I made my root partition 30GB, my swap 4GB and boot 500MB (experimenting using csm mode only) on my 64bit lappy. with 8GB of memory...Why does Linux do this? All my partitions are a little under what I made them at installation. which drives my OCD nuts!



I have Debian MATE on my old Desktop and every partition is EXACTLY what I made them...



I noticed there's no flags in the screenshot of gparted, so I will be re-installing Debian on my Lappy, with CSM and UEFI enabled which is probably the correct way. correct???
Anyways, it annoys me to death when Linux changes the partition size depending on the computer.

[p.H]

Linux has nothing to do with this. The Debian installer uses SI prefixes while Gparted uses binary prefixes.
30 GB = 28 GiB.

I noticed there's no flags in the screenshot of gparted, so I will be re-installing Debian on my Lappy, with CSM and UEFI enabled which is probably the correct way. correct???

No.
1) GRUB does not care about the boot flag. Neither does a compliant BIOS. Only some broken BIOS require it. If Debian boots fine then your BIOS does not require it.
2) Even if your BIOS required the boot flag, this is not a reason to reinstall. You can just set the boot flag with Gparted or any other partitioning tool.

PS :
1) It is highly unlikely that you need a separate /boot partition.
2) On a hard disk, putting the swap partition at the end of the drive is bad for performance (lower sequential speed and higher latency) It is better to put it near the beginning (between / and /home is fine).

[Lonewolf71]

Then why is it the correct size on my older machine and not my laptop? I used Debian's installer for both. Is it the DE? MATE vs. Gnome?
Gnome boots fine, but my OCD tells me to re-install

Since my laptop has a UEFI BIOS, should I use strictly UEFI, UEFI & CSM or one or the other?
What number should I put for a 4GB swap?

[p.H]

The size is what your asked for. If you asked for 30 GB, you got 30 GB, not 30 GiB. It has nothing to do with the desktop environment.
What is OCD ?

If you don't need UEFI for some reason, I recommend to stick with BIOS/CSM. Less trouble.

[Lonewolf71]

OCD=Obsessive-compulsive disorder But I'm mostly very picky.
So basically, don't pay attention to what gparted is showing? I actually have 30GB even though gparted shows less?

[NFT5]

They are different measurements of the same thing. Like if I said that my friend lives 1.6 kilometres from my house but you said he lives one mile from my house. The distance is the same but the unit of measurement is different.

One Gibibyte (GiB) = 2^30 bytes

One Gigabyte (GB) = 10^9 bytes

Notice that one uses a binary measurement while the other uses decimal.

So, for example, my sda2 partition, which I carefully set the size of in GParted at 25GiB, is reported by Gnome Disks as being 27GB or 26,843,545,600 bytes. Back in the day when we had hard drives of 20MB, accounting for each byte of space was important. Now, with 20TB drives available, if not quite affordable, it's not so critical.

Use whichever measurement system you prefer. Reinstalling the OS won't change it.

[Lonewolf71]

Good analogies. Thanks!