Dual-Boot Partition(s) - Input Needed

[SPatin]

System Layout:
Alienware M17 Laptop
2.26 GHz Quad-Core CPU
4.0 GB DDR3 RAM

Hard Drive #1: Toshiba 500 GB 7200 RPM
Hard Drive #2: Toshiba 100 GB 7200 RPM



What I was thinking of doing was putting Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) and Ubuntu 9.10 (64-bit) on the 100 GB hard drive - with just under a 75/25 split towards W7 (approximately 70 GB for W7 and 22 GB for Ubuntu). Would this be optimal, having the operating systems on one drive separate from nearly everything else?

Another question that I was unsure about with this setup was the swap area. It doesn't need to be on the same HDD as the running OS to be utilized, does it?

Also, any partition size adjustment recommendations would be appreciated.

[jayd512]

Hello and Welcome!
20 - 25 gigs would give you a pretty decent amount of room to play around and get your feet wet with Linux.
That setup will work just fine for you in keeping things separate.
And as far as swap space... given the amount of RAM you have, I don't think you'll really need any at all. If you do want to setup some swap, I would go for maybe 512 MB to a GB.

[SPatin]

I will probably add a "fair" amount of swap since I will be using the computer for some programming, 3D toolkits, etc.

I guess my main question with partition(s) is whether or not having the OS's on one hard drive and MOST, if not all, of the "storage" on another will improve system speed. Theoretically, that is what I thought, so that was my initial plan, but I'm not really an expert on some of this stuff so I wanted a second opinion.

I assume that applications running within each OS should also be on the same drive as the OS?

For instance, on the 100GB drive:
68 GB Windows (OS + apps)
18 GB Ubuntu (OS + apps)
6 GB Swap

with "storage" on the 500GB.



My only other concern really right now is about installing some of the toolkits on Ubuntu. I've done fairly well in picking up a lot of it already (only ~3 days in), but some programs are in repositories that are not easy to add for a novice (i.e. CrystalSpace 3D or Illricht Engine).

That is one program that I tried to compile and build AND download from various repositories for quite awhile with no luck. Any idea what I might be doing wrong? If I download the zip and extract it (to /usr/lib), how do I compile and build it to run through the terminal. I tried several ways and it didn't seem to work.

[Jonathan183]

[QUOTE=SPatin;7I've done fairly well in picking up a lot of it already (only ~3 days in), but some programs are in repositories that are not easy to add for a novice (i.e. CrystalSpace 3D or Illricht Engine).[/QUOTE]
Is this the sort of thing you are after? and have you looked here for info on adding repositories?