New linux system
 

Hello,

I gonna install ubuntu linux on a 160 gb harddrive. I was thinking to split the harddrive in two. 80 gb for windows XP and 80 gb for ubuntu. What do you guys think of that?

And how shall I build linux partition? 20 gb for /root, 5 gb for swap, or what would you suggest?

If it were my machine, I'd probably give swap 1 gig, / would get 12-14 gig (depending on how much software I intend to install), and the rest in /home.

How about logical and primary partition?

In your windows partition is a primary partition, you could create an 80 gig extended partition, and make your logical partitions for Linux inside the extended partition.

You can have up to 15 logical partitions inside the extended partition.

If you make all partitions primary, then you run into the 4 partition limit of the MBR. You could have only windows xp, linux root, linux /home, and swap partitions on the entire drive.

With your suggestion, what kind of partition would you set for each?
Boot - primary etc...

Windows would be the first partition on the drive: primary, bootable.
Then the extended partition, which is just a container for the logical parititons.
Then I'd probably make the Linux partitions in this order:
swap : logical
/ (root) : logical, bootable
/home : logical

Of course, opinions vary on how to set up a partition scheme. That's mine.

Thanks, now linux is installed.

First next week will I get my copy of windows. I heard that there is a problem if you first install linux and after that windows. What shall I do to fix that problem?

I assume you have a bootable liveCD version of Linux.

After installing Windows, you can boot that CD and use it to reinstall Grub for dual boot of Windows and Linux.

When you install windows, it will overwrite the MBR with it's own bootloader, and Linux will not be bootable. Be careful during the installation of windows that is doesn't delete/reformat your Linux partitions because they're not windows partitions.

After windows is installed, use your Linux installation cd to boot into Linux, open a console, su to root, and run grub-install to restore the grub bootloader to the MBR (there's plenty of documentation around on how to do that).

Then, also as root, you will have to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to make a menu entry for windows (there is also plenty of documentation for that).

If you want the windows partition mounted when you boot Linux so that you can view files in windows, you will have to make an entry to /etc/fstab.

For future reference, in researching Linux questions, www.google.com/linux is your friend. You will probably not have any problems that have not already been discovered and solved. Plus, using google first, you will often have the solution to your problem faster than waiting for someone on a bulletin board to respond to a question.

100% Ubuntu and 0% Windows, but that's just me :p

Out of 80 GB:
10 GB /root
1 GB swap
the rest in /home

Joel