Help - Just installed and now appear to have hardly any free space

First, look in your root (/) folder and see if your home (/home) folder is in there. If it is, it would be better to install Trisquel again, this time choosing the 300GB partition for the /home folder mount point and the 20GB partition for the root (/) mount point. Twenty GB should be plenty for your OS and applications, and any data that you gather later will not fill up the root partition if it's placed (where it belongs !) in the Data partition (/home). I'd label that 300GB partition "Data" so it'll make some sense to you.

Look at your disk with GParted (or install GParted from the Add/Remove Applications menu). Then see whether that second instance of the 300GB partition pops up ...

Is that the "something else" option that I saw at the bottom when I originally chose encrypted? 20GB to store everything that I will ever need for as long as I have this OS, every video or picture or piece of software really doesn't seem like enough, and I have no idea how I save things to other partitions, so all I wanted was to basically have one giant partition if that makes sense?

Wait the home folder itself is at inode/directory and has 287GB free space. So I can use all of that space, how do I chose whether to save it to the computer or the "home" partition? And I'm sorry if that sounds really dumb to be asking but I've just not done this before, I was using Windows for decades then Mint since April but didn't encrypt anything or use logical volume management so didn't encounter this issue.

Your whole disk is used by LVM (Logical Volume Manager) and that's what gets encrypted with LUKS, that's why you can't use that space.

Thanks guys I'm more clear about what's working now, and when I downloaded a few things I saw the /home free space going down rather than the tiny 20gb one. Also I was looking for help on drivers - I WAS going to go for NVIDIA and tried opening a .run file of the one I need (which is a GeForce 210) but now that I found there is a non proprietary one called Noevau or something, I'd like to go for that instead, can anyone help me setting that up?

Right and now I can't get my VPN to work on here either, and any time I try using something else that will work, it prevents me downloading anything that Trisquel doens't approve of. This basically means for all the talk about "free" and "open source", Trisquel is just a walled garden, you only let me use whitelisted stuff, and have literally disabled any kind of possibility for me to use what I want. I originally looked into Trisquel because I believe in trying to shed a lot of proprietary stuff, but you guys are basically just the same as Apple and Microsoft - You talk a good game, but at the end of the day you want to restrict your users just as much as they do, so no thanks. I'm going to install a different OS, one that DOESNT disable me getting stuff from non-free repositories. Thanks for wasting my day, I honestly thought you guys were different and weren't as bad as the big corps in how much you restricted people.

AND now it turns out that Trisquel will not let me make any ISO image on USB so that I can get rid of this damn OS and go to a FOSS one (a real one) - So now I'm having to use a friends computer to get an iso onto my USB so that I can finally delete Trisquel and get a proper OS where I am free to make changes as I see fit.

Explain to me why disabling me from creating an ISO image, and also disabling my package system from installing Unetbootin which WOULD work, is in any way ethical? You guys are pathetic, Trisquel is basically malware, and I'll be avoiding you and warning anyone I hear talking about you that they better be prepared to kiss control of their PC goodbye if they go ahead. And please delete my account, I can safely say I won't be using these forums again - And I have no doubt you'll want to get rid of this for criticizing your "free" OS.

I don't know how to compile stuff, and you've blocked me from activating non-iron repositories as I checked for this before posting. Ironic that in my attempt to lower my dependence on walled garden type restrictive software, I downloaded an OS that basically outright prevents me using anything but their own whitelisted stuff

Non iron should read non free

Ok so you don't like proprietary, I get that. But actually making trisquel refuse to work with anything proprietary, disabling the ability to use non free repositories, is that ethical or respecting users? It's disrespecting, and will get you a very bad name.

And now I can't even get debian installed cos it has some shit about "dchp" and how I need to enter a server IP or something on install. I never got the hang of installing these distro, I was hoping that trisquel would make it easy. Now you've stranded me without ANY OS at all. Thanks once again.

Oyster you know exactly what I mean. The trisquel OS does not allow me to use non free repositories. That option is disabled. How much clearer could I be?

I have been perfectly clear enough and very specific, but I'll repeat it for the third time and if you continue to deliberately claim you don't understand a very simple remark that's your call.

When using Trisquel I was literally prevented by the OS itself from using ANY repository apart from Trisquel. This is in contradiction to other distros which allow you to add other repos if you want. In Synpatic package manager there should be an option to add a non free repo, there is not, because you won't let anyone use any software that you don't agree with. Which basically backs up what I said about Trisquel (for all its talk about openess) is just as bad as Apple or Windows, the very sort of people I was trying to get away from.

And in addition (although this last bit isn't directly your fault), I'm now without an OS having to use an old PC instead. I was never any good with installing distros, and now until I figure out how to get through the myriad of incredibly complex options on setup - including what the hell DCHP means on Debian installation, I'll be without an OS of my own all because I really believed the shit you guys came out with about how you care about stuff being free and open. Don't worry, I'll warn others off making the same mistake so you don't get another thread criticizing it.

As I have said, it did prevent me. I'm not asking you to maintain a non free repo, just dont have your OS block me from downloading from one if I chose. I dont want Ubuntu as it's loaded with bloatware and crapware, and the Unity thing just freaks me out with how privacy intrusive it is. I wanted a good distro that was quite secure, well maintained, and put the users and their desires above all.

Ye, I ended up reinstalling Mint, I just don't think I'm cut out to be using Trisquel. I did try adding other repositorys but the list wouldn't show any new available stuff, so at the end of the day I stuck with what I know. Maybe in the future when I'm more experienced I'll come back and try it again, but at this point it honestly did look to me as though I couldn't use anything else other than whitelisted stuff, and until I'm more experienced in knowing how to manually install other things it's a waste of both our time if I stuck to using it.

Ahem...

When I first used Trisquel, I added on proprietary software to it. I won't name the particular program I'm thinking of, but I will say that it was a game. Additionally, my brother had no trouble whatsoever installing a proprietary Web browser onto one of my mom's computers (with her authorization). So, no, Trisquel doesn't prevent you from installing proprietary software.

How would Trisquel even do that, anyway? Short of being designed to refuse to connect to any resource on the Internet without special approval by some authority (which a team of only a couple of people simply doesn't have the time to do)?

Getting back to the original point of this thread:

When I installed Trisquel 7 to my external 1TB SSHD I first used Gparted to make three partitions: 30GB (ext4) for the OS, 8GB (linux -swap) for swap, and 864GB (xfs) for Data. Running the Trisquel live DVD, I chose "something else" (i.e., the checkbox at the bottom of the list of choices) and then chose the 30GB partition for mounting the root (/) folder and the 864GB partition for mounting the home (/home) folder.

What I ended up with was as nicely functioning Trisquel installation in which all my data is in the 864GB partition, and all my OS is in the 30GB partition.

When I run the other Trisquel OS that is installed on the 320GB internal HD, I see the data on that external SSHD residing on the 864GB partition and another home (/home) folder listed among the folders on the 30GB partition of the external SSHD. However, that latter home folder is empty, insofar as the internal Trisquel OS is concerned. When I run the external Trisquel OS, this distinction disappears and there is just one home folder. That's how it's s'posed to work.

Back to the current rants: Wine will take care of many proprietary applications, some better than others. If you try an independent way of running proprietary S/W, don't expect Trisquel to support its idiosyncrasies. My installation of Windows 7 (which came with my Lenovo T420 notebook) didn't object when I used Gparted to squeeze it into the corner of my HD, and Trisquel happily resides in the balance of that HD without any interferences, but with the luxury of being able to extract data from the Windows portion of the HD seamlessly and without having to reciprocate ... I don't even try to get data from the Trisquel installation back into Windows when running the Windows OS.

But I tried adding them with software manager but it wouldn't let me see aby of the non trisquel approved stuff. That's like locking someone in a room with a combo lock and saying they are free to leave but they need to learn the combination.

Ok sorry, it seems I was wrong and there was a way to add non free repositories. I overreacted. I still don't think trisquel is for me though yet, I wanna be a bit more experienced but I've wanted to get away from MS and Apple and I'm happy with another distro for now, I may reconsider trisquel in the future.

Thanks to the guy who told me how to get the other repositories. Ultimately it's not needed as I just put my old OS back on, but you were willing to help anyway so thanks.