disk partitioning for Ubuntu 8.1

[Wendy Galovich]

On Wednesday 21 January 2009 12:03:44 Ray Leventhal wrote:
> NoOp wrote:
> > On 01/21/2009 05:21 AM, Ray Leventhal wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> >> I've an unallocated 80GB segment on which I'd like to install Ubuntu.
> >>  From what I can see, I need to manually create the partitions using
> >> gparted from the LiveCD portion of the 8.1 distribution media.  If I can
> >> do this in an automated fashion, I'd love a pointer in the right
> >> direction.
> >>
> >> If it does need to be done manually, given a 2GB memory system, I'd be
> >> inclined to create a 4GB linux-swap partition, but am not sure (as I've
> >> come from the RH camp) if there's a preferred / and /boot paradigm.
> >
> > That's pretty much the safe formula.
>
> <snip>
>
> Thanks for your reply. I'd already pretty much decided that / and /boot
> partitions weren't a necessity, but I do appreciate the pointers.
>
> So, I'm going with a 4GB linux-swap partition with / set to the balance
> of the disk.
>
> -Yet another Ubuntu (desktop) convert :)
> Ray

One additional suggestion - you might want to consider setting up /home as a 
dedicated partition.  That way if you ever need to reinstall from scratch, you 
can select manual partitioning and preserve /home by choosing not to reformat 
it.  Of course you'd do a backup first anyway, but assuming a reinstall was 
uneventful you wouldn't have to restore the directory afterward.

I adopted the above during the years that I used Red Hat and subsequently 
Fedora as my primary desktop / laptop install, because during that time the 
consensus seemed to be that the safest way to upgrade those distributions was 
to do a fresh install of the upgraded version.  I've been using Ubuntu since 
trying 7.04 and never looked back, but have found this configuration handy 
enough to continue doing it.

Wendy