We typically run our characters from 1 to 20. I too enjoy the barbarian aesthetic, and it would be a lot of fun to play it as i can get pretty riled up in character.
I ask because while the fighter is more plain in rp, i feel the fighter will out perform the barb in later levels, and i am wondering if that is the correct analysis
I ran into this same problem a few months ago. Instead of taking the time to learn how to manage partitions and lvms, i just re-installed debian and put everything on the same partition because i had no reason to keep em separated.