[ubuntu-uk] Partitioning Questions

[Thomas Steffen]

On 4/30/07, Stephen Garton <sheepeatingtaz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The questions I am looking for answers for are:
> 1. Do I need 2Gb of Swap? (I Have 1GB RAM)


No, absolutely not. The old recommendation was twice as much as RAM, but
that is based on different assumptions. Unless you want to do something very
special, half your RAM should be enough. If you use more swap space, your
system will be dead slow anyway. And you can use a swap file (instead of a
partition) without much of a performance impact.


> 2. How much space do I _need_ for /?


A normal installation of Ubuntu (most of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, some of edubuntu,
development tools, TeX and some simulation software) tends to come out at
5GB for me. You can get a away with a lot less if you choose your packages
careful, but I think 10GB of the 80GB you have is not a bad start.

3. Can I resize Any of these partitions?


In theory yes. You need to boot from a CD, because you cannot change a
partition while in use. Increasing a partition is not difficult, but
shrinking takes some time (if you have ext3 or reiserfs, XFS does not shrink
at all). If you resize the first partition, you also need to move the second
partition, which again takes time.

Why recommendation for private use is always to have as few partitions as
possible. Separating /home is a good idea, because you can reinstall the
system without worrying about your data. A separate swap partition is ok,
but not necesarry. Every further partition is just asking for trouble.

Yours,
Thomas
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