Begin in 2011, computer manufacturers were moving to use UEFI and left BIOS. Today, it is mandatory for system with UEFI to have separate partition for EFI System Partition / ESP.
ESP contain boot loader to start operating system. One ESP may contain some boot loader for different operating system. Size of ESP for windows and Debian is 500MB to avoid problem when update occurred. It means for multi OS with different boot loader, ESP partition required bigger size.
During Debian installation, at step configure partition, create:
- size: 500 MB or bigger
- type: "EFI System Partition (ESP)", "EFI System Partition" or similar
All partitions required in Debian 13 system are:
- ESP: 500MB or bigger, will marked boot sector 0xEE
- Swap: 2 times physical memory. IMO, for physical memory more then 16GB, swap size equal to physical memory or less.
- root partition for single point mount /, or custom partition.
There are 3 types boot process and its year period:
- BIOS: old PC
- BIOS + GPT PC 2000-2020
- ESP + GPT PC > 2020
