[vox-tech] Need Partitioning Advice

[Alex Mandel]

Bob Scofield wrote:
> I'm planning to install Linux on my wife's computer because she does not like 
> Vista.  I'm going to create a dual boot and will have 111GB for Linux.
> 
> I am thinking of a simple partitioning system with separate partitions for:
> 
> /
> /home
> swap
> 
> My wife has 2GB of RAM, and I was thinking of making swap 4GB.
> 
> My first question is how big should / be?  On my desktop it's 8GB, and on my 
> laptop it's 13GB.  I'm not anywhere near using up the space on either of 
> those machines.  How about 13GB?
> 
> I notice that my desktop has a separate partition for /tmp.  Should I create a 
> separate /tmp partition for my wife?  If so, how big should it be?
> 
> Is there any special difficulty in creating a dual boot system with Vista?
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Bob

Bob,

The current recommendations we give people at the Installfests are
10-20GB for / (This depends a bit on types of uses and which distro - I
recently noted that Ubuntu needs at minimum 1GB of free space to do an
in place upgrade- technically wherever the apt cache is.)
1.1-2x RAM for Swap
Everything Else /home

Since your wife is not a "power user" most of the reasons for a separate
/tmp, /opt, /whatever just add unnecessary complication.

The only snag we've seen with Vista happened this last installfest where
it would only let us shrink a 200GB of free space by 10GB. We tried to
do some defrag magic based on some online tips and ended up making it
worse where we couldn't downsize Vista at all (System files stuck at the
back of the partition) and resorted to the Ubuntu Wubi installer as the
only feasible workaround.

A $ copy of a current version of Partition Magic or similar product may
alleviate this issue.

Alex