Few questions before I try to install Ubuntu

Eric Dunbar eric.dunbar at gmail.com
Sun Feb 19 18:47:37 UTC 2006


On 2/19/06, Thilo Six <T.Six at gmx.de> wrote:
> Boyan R. schrieb am 19.02.2006 17:23:
> > My 160 Gb HD is divided in 6 partitions. First four are occupied,
> > but fifth (5 Gb) and sixth (2.7 Gb) are free (currently both in fat32).
>
> This is together 7,7GB.
> As long i use Ubuntu my swap was used max. 10MB if even that.
> (384MB RAM).
> Swap comes in handy if you are going to try s.th. like suspend to disk
> or if you are forced t boot from a Live-CD.

Boyan, in your e-mail you mention that you have 512 MB of RAM. This is
more than enough RAM for most operations, particularly if you're just
"fooling around" to see what Ubuntu is like. Since it's enough RAM for
regular operations, your swap partition will see relatively (very)
little use. You can safely keep it small (e.g. 256 MB).

For e.g. on my server (YellowDogLinux) I have 256 MB of RAM and 25X MB
swap partition. I regularly run GNOME on it with things like GIMP or
OpenOffice.org and the machine rarely, if ever uses the swap
partition!

> What i strongly would suggest is to create a partiontion for your /home.
> This way your private settings are save even if you have to
> repair/reinstall for what ever reason.

Boyan, I would recommend that you DO NOT do this for the moment.

It's a setup that has caused me to be quite lazy and has given me
headaches in the past. Yes, it's nice to be able to repair, replace or
upgrade the OS without touching your "home" partition, however, unless
you're using your GNU/Linux install for your serious work, it's a PITA
(pain-in-the-ass) IMNSHO. Also, when you only have 5 GB available,
you're better off having that as one contiguous block than fighting to
keep the different partitions clean.

This is causing me problems on my server... 7 GB is just not enough to
handle the server-GNU/Linux OS properly... 7 GB server partition 25 GB
home partition + 35 GB HFS+ for Mac OS X... I'm waiting for YellowDog
4.1 to be released so I start fresh with a 10 or 15 GB GNU/Linux OS
partition, 2 GB Mac OS X/Mac OS 9 partition (for bootloading and
trouble-shooting) and the rest of the 80 GB HD partitioned into two
roughly equal ext3fs partitions.

And, since you are just trying out Ubuntu I'd keep things as simple as
possible. One partition on your HD for all your Ubuntu stuff (just
make sure you don't wipe out your other partitions).

> > I want to install Ubuntu on this 5 Gb partition. Should I manually format
> > it into linux format, and create swap partition (I have 512 Mb Ram) ?
> > So, basicely, should I split it to 4 Gb + 1 Gb swap manually, or when I
> > start installing Ubuntu (latest release) it will do that automaticly for me
> > ?

As I wrote above, don't worry too much about your swap partition. It's
not particularly important since you're just "fooling around". It also
doesn't really matter how big it is -- you can have it as large or as
small as you want, and, it doesn't have to be a multiple of anything
or as large (or larger or smaller) than your RAM.

> > Also, can Ubuntu fit on my 2.7 Gb partition ? (1.7 Gb + 1 Gb swap I guess)
> > I just want to see how it looks and works (for the start)

I suspect that you could probably install a really slim Ubuntu install
into your 2.7 GB partition.

> > If I MUST create swap partition manually, should I make it exactly 1024 Mb,
> > or is it better to make it little larger (just in case) ?

You could just as easily make your swap 10 MB!!! No size requirement
(keep in mind that 512 MB real RAM allows you a lot of lee-way...
though, you probably want to have at least 64 MB of swap, if not a bit
more).

> > I guess there is no risk of losing my current boot menu ?

I know nothing about Windows/IBM PC clones but it does seem to me that
you might be at risk of losing your current boot menu if it's
different from the one Ubuntu uses.

> > I hope somebody will find some time to answer me :(

I'm sure I won't the second and last one to (half-assedly) answer your
questions ;-).

Eric.




More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list