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]

Originally Posted by kidakaka

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]

Originally Posted by Rocker

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.

[ash]

*bump*
Its now my turn to join the party I upgraded my laptop HDD from 20 GB to 120 GB. I had previously partitioned my 20 GB as:
5GB: Windows
0.7GB: Swap (i need it.. the 384 MB ram isnt enough. I just pointed a page file to be at that particular partition instead of C drive)
5 GB: Data
5 GB: Programs
0.3 GB: temp
4 GB: Misc

I know, kinda silly to partition it even though the space was not much But it was fun to test around. With the 120 upgrade, it'll be similar to kidakaka's setup:

 
GB Content
10  Contains the Windows XP system files, MS Office, laptop drivers 
     and security programs
0.8 Swap partition for Windows
12  Reserved for the Linux OS
0.8 Swap partition for Linux
30  Partition for installed software
55  Partition for data files 
10  Partition for miscellaneous uses
1   Temporary partition for TEMP and IE

I'll figure out which will be the primary, extended and logical partitions later. I've done a clean reinstall using the image disks provided. Gonna install SP2 and then SP3 when it finally comes out (hopefully soon). After installing all the updates and drivers, i'm going to create an image using the free DriveImage XML. Next time when I want to reformat the OS, i'll just reinstall that image over C drive

[kidakaka]

Awesome touch with the TEMP and IE. Never thought of that!! Very nice ash! even from a security aspect, pretty cool!

[ash]

Thanks Though, I'm still a bit clueless on the linux aspect. I forgot to allocate space for the boot partition for linux. Does it have to be placed in a primary partition, or can I mount it on a logical partition instead? I'm just playing around with GParted at the moment. Appreciate your help, bro

I just downloaded SP3 RC2 Refresh. Contemplating whether to install it now or wait till end of this month *sigh*

[xheavenlyx]

Nice one!!

Oh, you should know this. I think by Windows swap you mean a pagefile partition for temporary usage of HD as a RAM. But this actually possibly can slow your windows down.

The page file is used as RAM for big tasks. This means your hard drive has to access the partition and the normal disk space for windows use AND another drive for your programs for example photoshop on drive G: Extra work. So using the main windows drive as a pagefile partition is fine.

I am really not sure, search around for more on partition stuff for a lightning fast PC!

The linux partition needs a primary partition, not an extended/logical. The 12GB u have created should be primary (If its not, then redo). In short
Create two main primary partitions and the rest unallocated can be turned into logical free space for all other needs.



As for linux distribution use this quiz:

zegenie Studios Linux Distribution Chooser

It depends on your likes and uses and needs, which distro to use.

On a personal note, my favorites till now (or what all I have exposed myself to) are:

DSL (Only 50MB with a full desktop GUI!!)
Puppy (about 300MB? full desktop)
Ubuntu (my first one and i liked it)
Edubuntu (Educational Ubuntu)
Xubuntu (For older PC's)
(I was gonna give links to the sites but u can do it urself, too much work lol)
<