Hello folks. Well I found it strange that when I went to partition my sda (only disk on my laptop), I couldn't assign the ext3 fs, only the ext4 file system. That was strange. I then did partition my entire fs. I gave 3 primary partitions.

/boot
/
/opt

Then I made an extended partition to add
swap
/tmp
/usr
/var
/home

I only added /opt as a primary partition because I couldn't create an extended partition with 2 partitions in the installer. So I put opt in there. Not a big deal.

But the problem I faced was when it asked me where I wanted to put the bootloader. Of course my /boot partition in sda1. However, when I edited where I could put that, it listed MBR as sda (that does make sense), then it listed first sector 1024 on sda1 which is my /boot partition, then below that, where I could not change any options, it listed sda2 which was my / partition. I guess my question is, if its going to install the bootloader on the MBR (sda), then what is the purpose of the /boot partition on sda1 that I created?

Thanks for any input.

In that scenario, there is probably little point in having a separate /boot partition, but it does no harm. I always assign one - partly habit from when it was a necessity.

The boot-loader has two major parts. The first is the actual loader code that the BIOS loads and transfers control to. This *must* be in the MBR.
The rest of the boot-loader is in a normal filesystem - and comprises executable code (update-grub or lilo commands for example), and configuration files. That is what is under /boot.

The installer is asking you about the MBR resident portion. You want to install that to the MBR.
The reason it asks is in case you already have a loader in the MBR that you wish to retain - then you would answer to install to the partition that contains your /boot. The other loader would need to be modified to chainload to the new system.

Thanks a lot. I totally understand now. If I haven't specified installing to sda aka MBR, it would install to sda1 (if theoretically I had another bootloader installed on there like LILO for example and as you said I would need to modify it to chainload my other OS's). I did check out my /boot partition and I guess I'm used to doing it that way. Really appreciate it.