Questions from a noob

[CodeForSociety]

Ok so basically Im what you would call a nooby when it comes to linux. I have sitting next to me an ubuntu installation cd, but I am scared to install it without knowing what I am doing first. You might be asking, why do I want to install linux? Well I just think the whole open source thing is a cool concept and it would be fun playing around on a new OS. Right now I have windows 7 on my computer, and I still want to keep a partition for it. Only problem is, I have no idea how to set up a partition for ubuntu. I have spent a couple of hours trying to research online and so far all i know is that you need a partition for the root (/) and the swap.

So could someone elaborate on the partitioning thing for me? What programs do you reccomend for setting up the partition? And how would I go about setting up the partition. I have a 1tb hard drive and 4 gigs of ram.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Its really easy to install Linux.
Boot up from Ubuntu LiveCD and open Partition Manager. Create 2 new partitions.

1. 10GB, ext3 for / (root)
2. 10GB or more, ext3 for /home ( its home partition to store user's data )

There is no need to create SWAP partition because you have 4 GB of RAM.

Start installation and select Manual Partitioning in Partition section. Select first ext3 partition and choose / in its mount point option. Select second ext3 partition and choose /home in its mount point. Continue installation. Installer will detect Windows OS and setup dual boot for you.

[jmadero]

toss in the Ubuntu cd, go to system -> administration -> gparted (it may be under partition editor)

From here resize your Windows partition down to whatever size you want it. Then set up a new partition to be at least 5 gigs (for the / partition) set up another one to be at least 10 gigs for the /home (almost equivialent to C:/ but much more powerful, every thing done by a user is stores in it), and lastly set up one partition at 1 gig for swap.

May take awhile to resize. From here click the install button from the desktop

when you get to the partition section do the last option (manual partition)

for the large windows partition select it and do change, then set it to ntfs and make it mount to /media/Windows

for the next one set it to mount at / and format it as ext4

for the next make it /home and also format to ext4

lastly make the swap space

[jmadero]

lol always controversy about size and file extensions, I like ext4 a lot more than 3, I can notice the difference. As for SWAP (isn't it required for hibernation?) I have 4 gigs of RAM also but have 1 gig of SWAP just in case.

Lastly, I run my Ubuntu on 6 gigs on root, I still have 1.5 gigs available and that's with KDE and Gnome installed

[devils casper]

I have done a lot discussion on ext3/ext4 file systems and lets keep it out for a while now.

As for SWAP (isn't it required for hibernation?) I have 4 gigs of RAM also but have 1 gig of SWAP just in case.

Check the output of free command. I don't think your machine has ever used that space.
Most of my machines have 2GB RAM and I haven't created any SWAP partition. Everything is working fine.

Lastly, I run my Ubuntu on 6 gigs on root, I still have 1.5 gigs available and that's with KDE and Gnome installed

Thread starter is a new user having 1TB of hard disk. He/She might try a lot things, new packages install/uninstall etc. 10GB space won't hurt and let him do every thing freely.

[Jonathan183]

As for SWAP (isn't it required for hibernation?) I have 4 gigs of RAM also but have 1 gig of SWAP just in case.

I thought if suspend to disk was required you need at least as much swap as you have RAM (not sure as I have never used it).

[D-cat]

With that much space why not go with a 20G for each part?

That will not only allow for massive future application installations (especially those types that use media data files like Stepmania), but will also give plenty of space in directories like (/var)/tmp

Is it really worth it to have more than a 10G root? Depends on what you do.

dcat@Server:~> df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1              20G   11G  7.8G  59% /
udev                  1.7G  252K  1.7G   1% /dev
/dev/sda3             163G  106G   57G  65% /home

[jmadero]

haha okay okay, no SWAP space (but I can tell you for sure I've used mine, I run conky monitoring my SWAP and after hibernation it's at least 25% used

I personally think that for root partition, the more space you give yourself, the more inefficient you tend to be (maybe it's just me though ) I used to use about 12 gigs, cut it down to 10, then to 4, I can run fine on 4 until I start installing kde stuff then....I need minimum 4.5 but I give myself 6 just to allow a little wiggle room.

So thread starter...10 gigs for root, at least 10 for home. I'd say it really depends on how you want to use Windows from Linux, I have Windows only to watch netflix instant view but because of that I store basically everything in my NTFS partition, Windows can't access Linux partitions correctly (I've tried a couple piece of software and all are....hard and non responsive as far as I can see). So I made symbolic links to everything, as soon as Netflix gets it's ....stuff...together and offers instant view on Linux I'll be saying goodbye to Windows and then I'll store everything on ext4 partitions

[htismaqe]

lol always controversy about size and file extensions, I like ext4 a lot more than 3, I can notice the difference. As for SWAP (isn't it required for hibernation?) I have 4 gigs of RAM also but have 1 gig of SWAP just in case.

Lastly, I run my Ubuntu on 6 gigs on root, I still have 1.5 gigs available and that's with KDE and Gnome installed

You took the words out of mouth. I do like EXT4 better, with Xubuntu and with Fedora. And yes, I thought you needed swap to hibernate.

[D-cat]

Hibernation:

AFAIC it's not necessary. I know KDE does and I think Gnome also does session saves. Firefox saves your current pages, and standard a user Linux install boots fast enough that the hassle of making Hibernation work to start with (and returning hardware states is still hit or miss) is in itself just not worth it.

Of course, this is just my opinion.