Few questions before I try to install Ubuntu

[linman]

Partitioning is a subject which causes the most furore because it is 
preceived to be hard to do - but nothing is further from the truth. In 
my experience, you need at least twice the amount of RAM reserved as 
your swap partition. I came across this very interesting article which 
could be helpful.

http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/01/effective-partitioning-how-and-why-of.html



Eric Dunbar wrote:
> 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.
>
>