Thinkpad T4x with Intel wifi 2200bg

[penguin2]

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Hello,
I wasn't sure what to place in the Title but my questions concern my Thinkpad T41.

As stated, it's a model 2373, T41 with ATI Mobile Radeon 9000 GPU and WiFi Intel 2200bg card.

The CPU is Pentium M 1.6 GHz. I t has a 120GB IDE HDD.

Is that sufficient info?

I currently have Windows XP on it but my question regards which distro to install.

I have several distros and XP on my desktop currently. I'm not sure I'm ready to experiment with VirtualBox or virtualization and if I do, I would experiment with it on my desktop which has a considerably larger drive (320GB).

Anyway, what I'm getting at is how many operating systems is okay without going overboard? I would like to install three or four. I have 120GB capacity drive so if each OS partition is 20GB each, that is around 4 or 5 operating systems without running out of space. I don't want to run out of room, though. I use internal drives in an enclosure for my data. So, I'd have a 1TB drive and save data on there.

These are my favorite distros so far:
sidux
Debian
Fedora 11
Kubuntu

I also am not certain whether KDE 4 is really that resource efficient compared to 3.5 although it's claimed it is. I was wondering about that because I find KDE 4 distros seem to take a little longer to boot up although I haven't timed any boot ups yet.

I am used to KDE though but is Gnome better for my particular laptop or is either desktop sufficient and it's must a matter of taste? I haven't tried Gnome in a while but I generally liked KDE better but I want efficiency and avoid any sluggishness on the laptop.

Geez, this post is getting rather lengthy. I hope that I'll still get some readers.

Thanks in advance for any replies, suggestions, recommendations and opinions....

Note: so far, Fedora 11 with KDE had my wireless working out of the box. sidux and Kubuntu needed further configuration but I feel like I could get it to work if the OS was installed (I was using a Live CD/DVD). I like Debian but there's no Live CD or DVD. Also, sidux is close enough and I probably don't have to worry about breaking things as much and still have things up to date.

[Hal343]

I am ru]nning Ubuntu 8.04, AntiX 8.2test1 and Mepis 8 on a 160 Gb drive

harold@harold-desktop:~$ df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2              3968500   1013128   2755364  27% /
varrun                 1037276       128   1037148   1% /var/run
varlock                1037276         0   1037276   0% /var/lock
udev                   1037276        84   1037192   1% /dev
devshm                 1037276       324   1036952   1% /dev/shm
lrm                    1037276     40204    997072   4% /lib/modules/2.6.24-24-generic/volatile
/dev/sda7            170835900  38397724 123828544  24% /home
/dev/sda5             19842864   3394180  15448640  19% /usr
/dev/sda6             19842864    482368  18360452   3% /var
gvfs-fuse-daemon       3968500   1013128   2755364  27% /home/harold/.gvfs
/dev/sda8              6894292   2652936   3891144  41% /media/disk
/dev/sda1             19686804   1706416  16980344  10% /media/disk-1

there is also a 2 Gb swap partition not shown.
You can see how much room I have left. I should have made /home smaller and sda8 bigger. Also if sda8 had been /home it would have been easier on my drive. Booting from sda8 is noisy, because its a long way out there for the read heads, I learned recently from Rubberman..

You should be able to run 4 or 5 distros easily.

[penguin2]

I am ru]nning Ubuntu 8.04, AntiX 8.2test1 and Mepis 8 on a 160 Gb drive

there is also a 2 Gb swap partition not shown.
You can see how much room I have left. I should have made /home smaller and sda8 bigger. Also if sda8 had been /home it would have been easier on my drive. Booting from sda8 is noisy, because its a long way out there for the read heads, I learned recently from Rubberman..

You should be able to run 4 or 5 distros easily.

That's good to know.

If I chose Kubuntu, sidux and Fedora, I'd have three :Linux operating systems and one Windows, XP.

So,
XP
sidux
Kubuntu
Fedora

How should I arrange the partitions?

I suppose the swap partition should be about 2GB on a 120GB drive.

But, some users recommend separate root and home partitions. Should I do that as well or how should I arrange the partitions?

On my desktop, I only have swap and root partitions for each Linux OS. But, maybe a separate home partition should be included for each Linux OS?

Anyway, it would be helpful to analyze this arrangement further.

Thanks for the reply!

[waterhead]

You can use the same swap and /home partition for all installed distros. You don't want to format it after the first distro installed. You will need to use different names for the user for each distro, and it will create a seperate folder for that user.

You may want to create a partition to store files and folders on, instead of storing them in your /home folder. The /home folders will be accessable from the other distros, but sometimes the permissions are different. You then need to have root privileges to access them.

With a seperate partiton for files and folders, you shouldn't run into the permission problems. You also can then make the /home partition smaller.

[penguin2]

I'm confused. I am wondering which arrangment to use.

Hal343, you subscribe to separating /usr, /home, /var etc. into separate partitions?

I have never done it this way. I also don't know how you'd partition in this manner if you were having more than one Linux OS so if you dual or triple boot, say.

I've read of users saying having just / (root) and /swap is enough and others who claim that is no good that you should have the extra partitions.

Isn't a 120GB drive too small for having all those extra partitions unless you were only going to have one Linux OS? Or?

I hope to receive some comments on this. Thanks.

[Hal343]

I am running 3 linux distros on mine. I discovered a separate /usr isn't necessary. I use small / partitions, and found that having /var on / means that / fills up and screws up when getting new kernel updates, so keep it separate. If you are willing to keep an eye on /var and delete .tar.gz backups when it gets close to filling up, and delete all old kernels you don't need anymore(keeping the newest working old one), you won't run into the same problems. I just didn't do the maintenance I should have.EDIT Waterheads advice will allow you to re-install without losing data and settings in /home, but if you have another drive for data, you can just have 1 swap & however many root partitions as you are using distros.

[penguin2]

I have another drive for data coming. I just add internal drives in enclosures as I need them.

I don't like having my data on the same partitions as the main directories of the OS.

I guess it would be on a different partition than /home or / if I have a separate partition, /data.

But, having my data on another drive that I can keep separate and not worry about when I need to reinstall seemed to me, the way to go.

Note: since my other thread was closed, no one is replying to this thread. This thread was currently specific to my Intel WiFi card but I guess I need to switch to my setup of partitions.

However, now with the title, I'm not sure that helps for asking for help for XP OS installs and partitoins help. :-/

[Hal343]

That happens when you ask a bunch of questions at once-some of them get lost. Did you get enough information from the other thread to help with wireless? You can follow the instructions there to see if that fixes problem.

[penguin2]

That happens when you ask a bunch of questions at once-some of them get lost. Did you get enough information from the other thread to help with wireless? You can follow the instructions there to see if that fixes problem.

The answers to the wrieless questions were very helpful. I feel like I could try any distro and get to work and if I have any trouble, I can refer back to the answers.

But, I'm more uncertain with the current status of my XP and the partition.

I am not sure if I should keep the current configuration or reinstall.

Furthermore, if I ever have to reinstall, I'm not sure what the next steps are.

[Hal343]

As far as your XP goes, you can shrink that partition with gparted make a linux swap partition and set up the rest of the disk as an extended partition broken into 4 or 5 partitions for different distros. Then its up to you whether you keep the present XP install or re-install it. If you re-install XP it will write over the MBR. so always keep a current copy of /boot/grub/menu.lst as a backup to replace after an XP install.

EDIT If you keep a separate /home partition you can have each distros /home as a folder in it so your configuration files don't get lost during upgrades.