I have two hard drives on a Del-4500 1.8GH Pentium 4 with 1G Ram. 1st drive 40 GB with XP & sp 2. 2nd HD partitioned(ntfs) earlier last year with 40GBs (approx.) per in E, F, G & H. I've since moved most all out of F so as to leave space enough for an install of Ubuntu 6.06 which I downloaded & burned to a CD. I've been studying in various locations but have not found a positive install procedure with the partitioning of F drive.
Will it be necessary to move all files from E to F so as to have the 1st part of this HD open for loading/mounting & reformatting. E has 26.4GB free, 10.8GB used; F has 38.9 GB free & 78.6 MB used; G has 23.6GB free & 15.3 used: H has 21.9GB free & 17.1GB used. I've been backing up E & most of G & H.
Will appreciate any info,

Welcome to LQ!

First thing - drive letters is Windows terminology. Linux uses hda, hdb, etc for each device, and then appends a number to that for the partition. Search Google for more info on this.

Basically, you need to create some free space on the hard drive. The easiest thing in your situation would be to empty one of the partitions that you have. When you install Ubuntu, delete that partition and tell the installer to use that space. It will create a swap partition and a root partition for you.

As part of the installation, Windows will be detected and the GRUB boot loader will be configured to boot either Windows or Linux, provided you install it to the MBR on the first hard drive. This should be the default option.

If you have any more questions, please ask.

I hope this helps
--Ian

Go ahead and skip the recommended swap partition. The speed difference between a dedicated partition and just a swap file (like windows) is vestigial nowadays. So you only need one partition for your Ubuntu install. You can use boot the Ubuntu CD into a full live desktop and use Gparted from there to mess with drive partitions ... If you open any of the filesystems remember to un-mount them ALL before messing with partition layouts.

This is probably too much info all at once... but back to the swap file. After you are all set up and running Ubuntu open a terminal windows and cut and paste:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/.swapfile bs=1M count=2048
sudo mkswap -f /.swapfile
sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bk
echo '/.swapfile swap swap 0 0' | sudo tee /etc/fstab

Explaination of each above step in order:
Make an empty 2Gb hidden file.
Then make it a swap file.
Make a backup of /etc/fstab to /etc/fstab.bk
Add the swapfile to the filesystem table for next boot.

You'll have to enable the swapfile for _this_ boot:
sudo swapon -av
free

In order again:
Turn on the swap file
Check to make sure it all worked.

I would just stick with a swap partition - it is much easier. Also, I think one of the reasons Linux fragments less than Windows is that the virtual memory is kept on a separate partition. I agree that there is probably no speed difference (was there ever one?). Also, some programs may complain.

You can mess around with your partitions in the Ubuntu installer, no need to worry about GParted for now.

--Ian

We are gonna confuse the poor guy.... ....but dd is pre-allocating the swapfile and thus no fragmenting. b)