Your "easier" has a lot of complicating qualifications. :) I'd describe single-partition as "slightly simpler, but requiring additional support mitigations, an

Your "easier" has a lot of complicating qualifications. :) I'd describe single-partition as "slightly simpler, but requiring additional support mitigations, and less effective at the primary job of keeping systems running". I prefer: One partition for / which is required to have an operable system for diagnosis of problems One partition for /var which is expected to grow with limited predictability One partition for the rest, which should be largely static depending on function, but sometimes surprises you regardless. ... With elastic scaling compute nodes and centralized logging, most of these issues are subsumed into the enormous support infrastructure and can be ignored. But some applications don't map well to that environment.