Hi there :-)

sick of MS, I've decided to convert my XP Desktop to Ubuntu 8.10
As I still have some Windows programs I want to run (Adobe CS4), but dont want DualBoot, I'd like to run XP in as a virtual machine.

I have 3 disks. Under XP 250GB (C: + D:) 500GB (E:) 70GB (F:)

After backing up all my personal files, I'd like to make a clean Ubuntu install, formatting all with ext3 (that would be the right file system, right? ;-)


Question 1: what partitions would be best practice?

I've found this interesting article, http://www.overclock.net/linux-unix/...ing-guide.html which states:

PRIMARY - Linux /Boot - EXT3 - 2% (200mb is fine)
PRIMARY - Linux / - EXT3 - 10% (3gb minimum in most cases)
PRIMARY - Linux SWAP - Linux SWAP - 2%
EXTENDED
LOGICAL - Linux /TMP - EXT3 - 5%
LOGICAL - Linux /VAR - EXT3 - 10%
LOGICAL - Linux /HOME - EXT3 - 71%

for a solo Linux system. What's your experience and opinion?

This would be for a single disk system I guess.

Question 2: How would that list look considering all 3 disks?

Question 3: As an absolute beginner. After inserting the Live CD, Ubuntu will come up with this 'Prepare disk space' wizzard. What do I do next to get all disks formatted ext3 and have the 'best practice' partitons created and properly mounted?

Question 4: Running a Windows XP as a virtual machine. Would that work on a ext3 disk? I know there are tools for XP to enable it to read/write ext3 right, but would it run itself properly in that virtual machine (any product suggestions here? :-)

Thanks a lot guys and girls :-)
Gerald

Once you have backed up all of your data, insert the Ubuntu Disk. Follow through the installation. When you get to the partition manager, choose the entire disk option on the disk you want to install on. Ubuntu will do the rest for you.

As fopr the virtual machine, I recommend you use VirtualBox. When you are in VirtualBox you create a virtual file that acts as a partition, and that file will contain inside of it a NTFS or FAT/32 partition, in which you can they install XP, Vista or any other NT or 9X OS.

Thanks Recursion

Hmm, so you would suggest to have all data - system and personal - on the same partition? That's been a no no for me in the MS world i've been living until now , so it just makes me a bit insecure.

OK, will try it

About the partition manager: OK I go for 'use entire disk'. So that would already make sure, that all Windows-leftovers (MBR..) would be cleaned and the disk would be reformatted ext3?

How can I have the other 2 discs also cleaned and reformatted ext3? Can I instruct the partition manager to do that or would you do that after ubuntu is up and running?

Thanks for the info about VirtualBox. Will try that out :-)

Regards
Gerald

Hello, you can format them later, when you have your system running. There is no need for a complex partition layout in your case of a single computer running a single distro.

All Unix based files systems have a very similar Filesystem Hierarchy. Im sure you have seen it before, it goes as follows.

/
/bin
/boot
/dev
/etc
/home
.
.
.

All of these can be mounted manually from within the root partition other partitions or even over a network with NFS. You are correct that just like in windows, separating resources via multiple partitions is a very good idea. As an example lets say we have 100 computers in a small office, would it be wise to keep their home directories spanned across local machines. It's not likely, instead we would rather set up NFS and have the /home directories mounted remotely from a main server. In this setup multiple users can log in on different machines, and there files will be there for them. Now you may ask what if the main server was to crash, well then you would need some sort of redundancy and a great backup scheme.

As a second example, lets look at /usr, this directory is filled with lots and lots of files. Files that almost every user uses. So its a lot smarter to have one remote copy on the main server, rather than a a huge local copy on every computer.

So I would recommend you put the /home on another drive completely, but you really dont need to worry about it. I recommend you get used to Linux and then once you are then customize to your needs.


`
If you still really wanted the windows stuff after the format to ext3 it is theoretically possible to get the windows file structure back, though incredibly unlikely. If you want to be sure, you will need to wipe the disk. I don't really think you need to. When you format the drive to ext3, it will write the file system along with the inode structure. The more you use the drive the less likely the recoverability of the windows partition is. Unless you have material that simply needs to be erased I wouldn't worry about it.

As for the other disks, once you install ubuntu do the following

sudo apt-get install gparted
sudo gparted

Once in gparted use it to properly partition the drives.


If you want you can name one of the drives /home and then mount() it. You can even manually mount() it over the current /home partition or add it to the /etc/fstab file


if ya got any more ?'s, pleas feel free to ask.

Hi Recursion

Just realised that I've forgotten to thank you for your last post and explanation. Really thought I did ;-) Guess I was to busy getting used to Ubuntu. Was playing around with GNOME until now and mounting disks and stuff. But just decided to switch to a KDE only KUBUNTU because it seems its more developer oriented with nice file manager and stuff...

Thanks also for your kind offer to help more if needed. Appreciated much :-)

Take care
Gerald