[Trotter]

SInce I finally got to upgrade to a decent sized hard drive, I now have room to add a linux partiton and go dual boot.

But my question is... what size partition do I need? I am currently downloading Kubuntu 5.10.

[Sevoma]

Well, you can do a all in one partition if you are going to dual boot.

I would say 30gb main ext3 partiton and a 1.5gb swap partition. They main partition should be 15-20gb at least -so if you want anymore, you can increase it.

I recommend ubuntu over kubuntu though...


EDIT: Since it is a new harddrive, you may not have windows installed on it yet. To avoid Mbr problems, install Windows first, then linux.

[Trotter]

Sorry... I should have expounded a bit.

I bought the 160 gig. I then used Ghost to copy my old drive over to the new drive. The old drive was only 40 gig, so I have lots of free space right now.

I am going to add a partition to install Linux on for dual boot purposes. I am going to try Kubuntu to see how it works out. I have tried Ubuntu as a live CD... it works, but it butt-ugly (<<< personal opinion).

I'm just not sure what size to make the partition. I want to put Linux on it, as well as any other files it may need or use.

[Sevoma]

You can theme gnome. It can look very different from what you have seen. It is faster, has a better layout, better integrated, and some more things... I used to use kubuntu, but I found ubuntu was better once I tried it.

[Trotter]

So, what size partition do I need, then?

[horndude]

You need about 3gb plus space for whatever files your gonna work with. Swap partition= double RAM up to about 512mb, over that is well into the overkill zone.

[GameGURU]

You don't need swap space on that size of a Hard Drive. I never had it...

I would say find the amount of space that you want to put Linux on, whatever you want is what you make it. Technically you can run Linux in some insanely small partitions, but I wouldn't go for anything under 10GB.

Especially if you plan on using it for music, movies, images anything of that sort, in which case I would give myself 30-40gGB.

[Qiranworms]

Originally posted by GameGURU
You don't need swap space on that size of a Hard Drive. I never had it...

Why would more HD space create less need for swap? Swap space is the Linux term for virtual memory (OS X), or the page file (XP), the operating system uses it to supplement the physical RAM. Having it on a seperate partition is usually a good idea. Trotter's sig states that he's got 512 MB of RAM. Unless he plans on doing pretty much no multitasking, I'd say a swap partition of some sort is still a good idea.

[GameGURU]

Originally posted by Qiranworms
Why would more HD space create less need for swap? Swap space is the Linux term for virtual memory (OS X), or the page file (XP), the operating system uses it to supplement the physical RAM. Having it on a seperate partition is usually a good idea. Trotter's sig states that he's got 512 MB of RAM. Unless he plans on doing pretty much no multitasking, I'd say a swap partition of some sort is still a good idea.

I read somewhere that high amounts of hard drive space and memory let you get away with not having swap partitions.

I have also been told this I believe on LinuxQuestions.org or Linuxforums.org

[philg]

Harddrive space is not the important factor, memory size is. The swap partition is where pages of memory are put when the memory fills up. The least used or pages that were accessed the longest time ago are put into the swap if the memory is full and another program wants more. (in very brief terms).

With large memory the system is less likely to fill it up and thus the need for a swap partition is reduced. With 512Megs of memory I'd say you would need a swap partition, though if you had a gig of memory and didn't do much that was memory hungry eg graphics processing you could quite easily get away with no swap