Practical Problem

[kidakaka]

Hey Guys (and gals),

I have a real life problem for all of you techies. Its not a problem per se, but wanted all of your opinions on how I should do things best, so here goes.

I recently purchased a new lappie ... a Turion, 1GB, nForce, yada-yada,blah-blah, thingy. Now it came with recovery disks *shakes a fist at the vendor (name withheld for whatever reasons)*, so everytime I reinstall the HP software *oops*, reformats my hdd (160GB), and installs Vista on it automatically. Whether I want it or not. Obviously I dont want it. So I go with this tirage and download the latest Ubuntu, *whew, sigh of relief*.

Now, what would be the best partition configuration for this setup -
1. Ubuntu (Default OS)
2. Vista / XP (for using Microsoft Office, would you believe it )
My maximum usage on this machine would be MS Office + Putty + music + games (loads of them) + movies + any free text editor. I stress on MS Office because sadly OpenOffice or Abiword have yet to deliver on the same quality of docs as MS Office has doing.

Hence, the problem is, how should I divide my hdd into partitions so as to access my songs and movies and games from both the OSes. I was thinking something like -

10 GB for Windows (NTFS)
10 GB for Ubuntu (ext3) mounted as /
1 GB as swap space
100 mb mounted as boot
40 GB for songs (fat32)
40 GB for games (fat32)
40 GB for movies (fat32)
rest for misc (fat32)

Can you suggest a better way to reformat?

[Rocker]

10 GB for Windows (NTFS)
10 GB for Ubuntu (ext3) mounted as /
1 GB as swap space
100 mb mounted as boot
40 GB for songs (fat32)
40 GB for games (fat32)
40 GB for movies (fat32)
rest for misc (fat32)

Can you suggest a better way to reformat?

How about Star Office? You won't have to use M$ then!

Vista installation will take around 10 GB ( ~ 8 GB ) Better way would be to allot 20 GB to Windows & 30 GB to Movies.

Swap should get 2 GB, in my opinion

[kidakaka]

How about Star Office? You won't have to use M$ then!

Vista installation will take around 10 GB ( ~ 8 GB ) Better way would be to allot 20 GB to Windows & 30 GB to Movies.

Swap should get 2 GB, in my opinion

Hey Rocker, thanks!

So a general rule of the thumb for swap is twice the RAM?

[ash]

Nice setup Hm, I didn't know you can use one swap partition for both Ubuntu and Windows, thats cool.

[kidakaka]

Heh, yeah! Again a question, here, ash .. I dont think we can use one swap partition for ubuntu and windows .. the swap was meant for ubuntu only

[xheavenlyx]

My God, This world is sure a small place!!

I bought a HP laptop just 4 months ago. After 3 weeks of hell now I have:

WinXP, VISTA, Ubuntu7.04

Never use the recovery disk (It SUX bad), download Gpart or some linux partition software for better results, and DONT remove the partition with recovery HP. And bytheway you cannot access ext3 or any linux type with Windows, but you CAN access windows from linux for your files.

So you can have a common NTFS part for your music and movies and other pirated $hit which can be accessed thru M$ and Linux both. I went thru about 20 diff sites for this help and believe me it will be invaluable to read up on this!!

I dont use swap, if you got 1~2GB RAM then there is no need for swap. If you are planning on doing video editing or 3D stuff on linux then you can have a swap partition.

[xheavenlyx]

Oh and my allotment is as follows:

70GB Vista (By mistake)
20GB XP
20GB Linux
5GB Recovery part.

Presently using Grub loader but preffer EasyBDC

[kidakaka]

Awesome x_heavenly_x!! Small world after all

[mahul]

hey kaka i think u should allot more 4 vista definitely else u might run out of virtual memory if u run graphics applications...n i more question why use ubuntu when there r better distros available? n ash as far as my knowledge goes there is nothing of swap 4 windows.....windows uses its c drive 4 virtual memory n u can actually increase/decrease it..cntct me if u wanna know more

[xheavenlyx]

You dont need to Q why we use Ubuntu, its a personal choice since linuX is completely customizable. I use DSL(damn small linux) on my Extensa 500 ACER laptop (Prehistorically '98).

And yea its known Windooz does not use swap.

anyway, wanted to add, anyone tihnking of buying HP. DONT, you will regret it bad, take it from a first hand sufferer of HP. My wireless died away ...i mean not died, but win/linux cannot detect the hardware anymore.

I am still looking for a sol actively, If I get a temp fix, im gonna sell this $hit off.