January 19, 2026, 4:29pm 1

I use Fedora. But I many VMs (big VM files). So I have to srink or grove many times the partitions. Therefore I use LVM. Simply my scheme is like:

• /boot/EFI

• /boot

• LVM

• A- fedora OS root. mount-point: / EXT4 with LUKS

• B- personal files mount-point /personal-files EXT4 with LUKS

I shrink or grow A and B partitions easily. Therefore I use LVM.

But with LUKS and LVM things can get very complicated. As mentioned their official documentation:

https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/-/wikis/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#2-setup

A and B can not be BTRFS sub-volumes because, if I will re-install the OS it should not format B. BTRFS does not solve this scenario.

Fedora’s Anaconda has issues with predefined LVM sub-volumes. I also seen those my eyes. Nautilus can not also list my LVM sub-volumes on the left panel.

The modern Linux filesystems which support natively encryption, do not support shrink. They can only grow.

Most of GUI apps like Gparted, KDE partition manager, Cockpit-storage, blivet-gui, gnome-disk, do not support LVM with LUKS.

I don’t have the courage to use LUKS inside LVM. Without LVM I dont think it will be difficult. But without LVM, to resize partitions only for 100 MB may takes hours.

Without LUKS its too risky to use SSD, because we have over‑provisioning issue (not enough to wipe free space).

Could you please share your daily practices and partition schemes of your devices?