Then there was something mentioned about namespaces, which should
be allocated smaller than the physical drive
Is this really needed - just to boot from this SSD?
NVMe namespaces are an abstraction layer that allows a controller to
present its connected storage as a number of independent volumes.
Think LVM LVs, or the way a hardware RAID card presents volumes as
multiple SCSI LUNs.
Your run-of-the-mill NVMe "gumstick" SSD by default will expose all of
its capacity in a single namespace (and I don't even think it can be
configured any other way), so you don't have to worry.
Just remember that NVMe storage is always accessed through a namespace,
so the equivalent of good old /dev/sda is not /dev/nvme0 (the
controller) but /dev/nvme0n1 (the first namespace on the controller)
Or is it sufficient (and harmless for the SSD) to just
partitioning and format the drive?
It's not only harmless, it's the way it's supposed to be used.
Remember that you will need to boot in UEFI mode, so you will need a
system partition (and you really, really want to use GPT). The gentoo
handbook has a good section on UEFI booting.
I found some hints regarding page sizes and erase block sizes
when partitioning the drive.
I wouldn't bother with that, but you're free to experiment :)
andrea
