[svlug] SSD and workstation

[Ivan Sergio Borgonovo]

I'm going to install Debian sid on my new workstation that will come
with a 32GB SSD, an inherited 120Gb old traditional SATA 2 HD, an AMD
FX 6100 and 8Gb of RAM.

My files will reside on a samba share in ~/Documents/

Other stuff in ~/ will be local.

I do turn off my PC, more precisely I like hibernate.
I do compile stuff for a living and I enjoy fast compilation, but this
seems to be independent on SSD.
I do not work with large files and generally most of my files resides
on a samba share.
When I do DB development the DB is not on my workstation.
I'll use uefi.
The lifespan of this workstation is going to be between 3 to 6 years.
I'm intrigued to try btrfs just to gain experience but I've no idea
about its maturity or advantages over other SSD "friendly" candidates.

There is a non negligible chance that I'll upgrade the old HD so I'll
have to plan a setup that will make switching the traditional HD easy.

Main focus is on endurance of SSD without sacrificing too much
performance in everyday uses.

I'd have to pick up a file system, decide mount options, decide
partitions, decide where to put what (SSD vs platters), how to setup
swap, consider compression...

I was planning to:
- make a small UEFI partition, a separate /boot partition (still
  needed?) and most of / including /home on SSD.
- put swap, /var on the traditional HD (~/Documents will be a samba
  share)
- chose btrfs (or ext4 or xfs??)
- chose deadline scheduler for SSD only
- use noatime on SSD + other options depending on fs.

Some of the stuff in ~/ seems to be frequently written but most seems
to be mostly read-only but I can't see how I could easily separate
them. So /home on SSD may not be a clever option.

I'm worried uefi and / on btrfs will make the installation process
troublesome.

Any comments, advice, details, experience to share?

thanks