problem logging into live session user ubuntu (on usb stick with persistence)

Fixing you mother in law's computer? - you are obviously a gentleman. And Fud? I never heard that before - but there is obviously a lot of that about and not just in connection with computers.

As a side issue I have loaded three systems onto my very small 4 GB stick with a very small persistence space. all works and was easy to do with Yumi. No particular reason for choice - Mint LXDE, Elementary Freya and Debian. Mainly to have a play and see what is out there. All are nice and easy to use. Debian I cannot get the wi-fi and screen brightness working. I know that is to do with the avoidance of non-free firmware ethics of the developers. I have located the right drivers for the wi-fi. I cannot figure out how to download them to the correct directory/file in the Debian system. I can get access to the internet and also terminal on my live Ubuntu stick but how do I direct the download from the Ubuntu terminal to the Debian file where I want it? Also will there be a permissions issue? I guess it is a particular CLi method?

With regard to partitions, simple seems good and the guide you gave above is extremely helpful and encourages me to have a go. One thing that confuses me is if I have a simple set-up such as /, /home, and swap, will I be missing a data partition?

Is /, /home, and swap all I need? - and /home/data (or /data) just a luxury? How do you decide what to put where or does root decide for me?

Why do larger set ups need all these separate categories: /usr, /bin, etc if they are not necessary to set up separately?

Sorry, I know this is probably explained somewhere but it is often easier just to ask.

Finally, if my current box has windows using say three partitions - boot, C, D these will be on a drive that is NFTS? If I do not format EXT 3/4 on the final partition ready for linux it will cause issues - no? Or is it the case that the swap handles all that?

Also If I have one partition to play with (the 4th) this one must be seen as an extension partition and divided itself as logical partitions or have I misunderstood that?

Another thing, is the size of / not fixed by the system you download? - or does it get larger with use like /home or /data?

Originally Posted by jones5 A further question is when I am trying out these various versions - are there any that are particularly hard to remove from USB's when wanting a clean USB to start with another version tryout?

It depends on how you created the USB. If you installed a version of linux in the same way you would install to a hard drive, then you will have no problem. On the other hand, if you load a live linux version to your USB (particularly Linux Mint and other distros using the same type of .iso structure) using the dd method, then your USB boot sector will contain "iso9660 filesystem"
If you just want to use the drive for something else you can use the dd command to clean it up.
The problem is that when you make a usb drive a live Mint drive, you create a "monster" in a way. You are creating a iso9660 filesystem.
The "iso9660 filesystem" means that the USB held an isohybrid image. Since that filesystem is in the first 64 sectors of the disk, you can't delete it by deleting partitions. You can delete all of your partitions, and it will still be there. You can format the partition and it will still be there.
So here is how you fix it:
First, make sure you know the linux drive letter for your USB drive. You don't want to accidentally erase your hard drive. Run one of the following commands just to be sure you have the right drive designation.

inxi -pou

or

sudo lsblk -f

Since I have two internal hard drives, my USB is sdc. Yours might be sdb or sdd
Now you can erase the boot area and everything on the drive with this command

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=4096

where X is your USB drive
It takes a long time to dd a drive, so be patient. My 8 GB drive took almost 20 minutes.
After the USB drive is wiped clean, open GParted.
Unmount the USB drive - right click > Unmount
create a partition table - Device > Create Partition Table > msdos
Apply
create a new ext2 partition (or any format you want) - right click > New
set the boot flag - right click > Flag > boot (optional)
set the label - right click > Label (whatever text you want - no spaces)
Apply
Now you have a clean USB drive. I use this method to prepare any uncooperative USB drive.

Re: the recommendation you quoted from the Arch Installation guide:
Quote:"Step Two: Set Up Your Partitions
While you could always partition your drive from the Arch Linux installation CD, it's much easier to do from a Linux Live CD like Ubuntu or GParted, which you probably already have (because you're no Linux slouch!). "
You can download and burn the GParted live CD (234 MB).
http://gparted.org/livecd.php

Originally Posted by jones5 I am looking at a beginners' partition guide and how to set up the file system and will come back shortly with no doubt many questions. I recall a suggestion that it is possible to put the entire OS into the home directory (mainly to preserve file permissions for the user - is that correct?). Are there both good and bad effects of doing this?

Undesirable, and probably impossible - as already noted.

Originally Posted by jones5 With regard to partitions, simple seems good and the guide you gave above is extremely helpful and encourages me to have a go. One thing that confuses me is if I have a simple set-up such as /, /home, and swap, will I be missing a data partition? Is /, /home, and swap all I need? - and /home/data (or /data) just a luxury? How do you decide what to put where or does root decide for me?

There is no one correct answer. It is a matter of personal preference. Many experienced people create a separate /home partition (where all of your personal files are stored), and many other experienced people, myself included, do not use a separate /home partition, but instead use a separate /data partition (where all of your personal files are stored).
You need a big storage space for your personal files (photos, documents, videos, etc.) That can be a large /home partition or a large /data partition. You do not need both.
widget said previously, "I have a working Manjaro install with a huge 5gig /home on a large drive with a data partition on it. Gparted reports there are 253MB used in that 5 gigs. A good bit of that is the overhead from the ext4 file system, the rest is just the ~/.foo files. When I go and use that install any thing generated that needs saved goes in a data partition."
That is unusual, but I can see the point. The personal configuration files (253MB) are kept separate from the / partition, and from the personal data. That method, or having a large separate /home, allows you to install a new linux version to your / partition, while preserving your personal config files.
The decision is mostly about where your personal configuration files are stored. If you do not have a separate /home partition, then your personal config files are stored on the / partition. If you do have a separate /home partition, that is where your personal configuration files are stored.

Originally Posted by jones5 Finally, if my current box has windows using say three partitions - boot, C, D these will be on a drive that is NFTS? If I do not format EXT 3/4 on the final partition ready for linux it will cause issues - no? Or is it the case that the swap handles all that? Also If I have one partition to play with (the 4th) this one must be seen as an extension partition and divided itself as logical partitions or have I misunderstood that?

Linux cannot be installed to a NTFS formatted partition. Your forth partition will have to be an extended partition where you will create the logical partitions for linux.

Originally Posted by jones5 Another thing, is the size of / not fixed by the system you download?

The size of the / partition COULD be determined by the linux you are installing - but only if you use the automated install. I never do that. I always create the partitions I want first - whatever size I want, and do a manual installation.

Originally Posted by jones5 does it get larger with use like /home or /data?

The data stored in your / partition will grow as you install more programs, fonts, themes, etc. So you need to account for that future activity. Normally, 13 to 15GB should be plenty.

All that TxLonghorn said is very good advice.

I don't know where you read this crap about putting your system files in /home but just forget it. This was written by someone with either no knowledge of Linux, or any other OS for that matter, or they were actively malicious.

I suspect it was in a blog about Linux 95 of which are written by people using Linux once a month and blogging to see their name up in lights.

All you need for a working system is / and /swap. It will work. There are some problems with it if you ever experiment with your system as I figure you will probably do.

When you have that kind of behaviour, particularly as a new user (believe me I know), you will screw up your system. You will not have the personal experience and just mental tools to correct these things in a timely manner. You will reinstall. If your / and /home are separate you can easily reinstall formatting only the / partition. You should definitely back up your /home data as things can happen. But just reinstalling / and leaving all your /home stuff alone makes setting up your system back into running order a matter of minutes.

A separate /data partition is not really needed but is just very handy. If you were to format it to ntfs you could share it with XP. I wouldn't do that as that puts all your data in direct danger from attacks on XP but it is your box and your data. I would make it something like ext4 that XP can't read. You can grab data from XP with your Linux install and put it in that partition and you can do the same if you want something from /data put into XP.

Where a data partition becomes a greater assest is if you have another drive to put it on. Assuming the data is stored on a newer drive it should be safer there than on the drive on which you are installed.

I also really recommend to the adverturous noob, because it worked so well for me, to have, when you come to your senses and delete all MS related code from your box, to have a second install of Linux on which to do ALL your experimentation on. This gives you one OS that will be safe from your learning experiences. I spent most of my time on the second install because it was more fun. Having a /data partition gives you a common place to put files used on both installed systems.

Most people have, at least, some music and some images. These are great to put some place common. For one thing; if you set up a particular music player on one install and have it all configured as you like and have playlists set up that you like it is simple to simply copy the ~/.foo file for the music player to the other install. This will give you all your config and playlists. Most importantly the path to the data partition should be identical in both installs so those play lists will work without any editing.

If you store and watch videos the sensible place to put them is in a /data partition for easy use in both installs. The same is true for text files of any sort that you use regularly.

There is no sense on my setup, with 8 installs, to have my Linux related files on each install. I have cheat sheets, some instructions written by me for me, my chroot scripts for managing my other installs from what ever install I am on, a lot of things I am studying to see if I can master them in text or pdf format. Having all these duplicated on all the installs is simple crazy.

They could be left on one install and grabbed from there but then you may need to mess with some permissions on some files. I prefer not to have some files in an install that have permissions altered for access from outside that install. This can be pretty to screw up, as you may have noticed for someone not real familiar with user and group file permissions. Really irritating if the user on install B can access files on install A when the user on A can't. Also makes those file just a bit of a softer target for outside assault as unlikely as that may be.

Your first created user, if using Debian based installs, has a uid of 1000. So if your data partition is set up with the files owned by user 1000 and that users group (gid also 1000) then any of your installs users, no matter what their name is, have equal access to those files on those partition.

This is not a real problem if you have completely separate installs and use the same user name on all of them. To save some space I use some common /home partitions meaning that the user name can not be the same or the ~/home directory would be the same along with the ~/.foo files and that causes conflicts if your installs are not identical. Therefore they all have unique user names and separate ~/home directories. As they are all installed on separate / partitions they are separate installs and so all the users are still using the uid and gid of 1000.

I like using unique user names. It is hard for a Win user to wrap their head around the concept of a multi user system. You can have a single system with hundreds of users all using the same /home directory and not even being able to see any evidence of any other user using that directory. This is all down to file permissions.

I know that you are interested in a secure system and therefore you will be playing, as you already have, with those permissions. The place to do that is on a dedicated, small "throw away" install where you can create several users rather than just one. Two or three makes it so much more interesting and makes the whole system of permissions make more sense.

Doing this on a system you depend on day to day for actual work is not sensible until you know what you are doing. This is another reason for having a separate /home on all installs. Permissions are set in system files. Therefore if you get totally tangled you can keep your /home, reinstall / and then be quickly set up for a new entanglement.

Been thinking about this partitioning stuff. Thought this might help.

This is Gnu/Linux. It is not Windows or anything but itself.

It is configurable by the user in user land and by Root everywhere else. Everywhere.

There really is a defined "right" way for you to partition your drive(s). All you need to do is define that way.

We can give advice. There is a lot of experience on this forum. We have all come up with ways we like to do things and have very good reasons for doing them that way. They may not be very similar to each other.

They may not be very similar to what you are doing in a couple years.

We are not doing it on your hardware, doing what ever it is you do on your computer, looking through your eyes using your brain.

It can be set up to fit your needs, probably, much closer than any OS that you do not write from scratch for yourself.

It is very different from anything you have used before and will take some learning. It is worth it. We can help. We have made most of the mistakes you are going to make.

If you lived next door here in Big Sky country I would be happy to set it up for you. I would encourage you to change it as soon as I was finished. And would be very interested to see what you came up with. May give me some ideas for improving my setup.

One size and one way just doesn't really come into play here in Tux land.

EDIT
Note in my sig the list of my hardware. Nothing special. Most mainly fairly modern.

Audigy2? Why on earth? Becuase I like it.

Should you use it? If you like it. I certainly don't go around recommending it.

This is my box. Yours is your box. Make it fit you.

Thanks to Widget and TxLonghorn for the continued advice. It has made things a lot clearer and accelerated my learning a great deal. I have put to the side the idea of full installation on a USB stick and using Arch for the moment and agree with the idea to get a few ordinary partitions and installations completed before attempting the above.
Just to clarify:

There are a lot of warnings about the dangers in partitioning. Those dangers are real. There can be things wrong with the partitioning agent you are using. You can make a mistake. Back up your data. I can easily understand your concerns. You are working on your box, with an OS you know and can use with ease installed and you don't want to screw it up.

My main concern with partitioning is the XP on my netbook, where I propose installing one or more Linux OS, has come pre-loaded without a CD and my only backup is on the D drive on the same hard drive as C. I suppose I should copy the backup before partitioning?

Below I assume the word partition cannot be used interchangeably with directory and file? So, one can have a /home directory in / (for example) but it is not the same as a /home partition. In the /home partition you could also have a personal configuration directory or a data file?

Returning to which items to include as partitions:

I also really recommend to the adverturous noob, because it worked so well for me, to have, when you come to your senses and delete all MS related code from your box, to have a second install of Linux on which to do ALL your experimentation on. This gives you one OS that will be safe from your learning experiences. I spent most of my time on the second install because it was more fun. Having a /data partition gives you a common place to put files used on both installed systems.

Whilst being no fan of XP or Windows it will have to stay for now. However, the idea of adding two installs of the chosen Linux operating system so as to be able to mess one up and keep the other for everyday proper use appeals to me. This I will do.

It is still not fully clear to me regarding: /home, /data, and personal configuration files.

The personal configuration files (253MB) are kept separate from the / partition, and from the personal data. That method, or having a large separate /home, allows you to install a new linux version to your / partition, while preserving your personal config files.

I understand all these can be in a single partition /home.

However, can a user have - /home, /data, and /personal configuration partitions all separate?
If so, what goes in each and why would that be advantageous. I understand that if one needs to renew the OS then /home and /personal configuration would stay the same if kept separate and preferably off the OS hard drive.

Next - If I did have two identical Linux OS using one for experimentation, how would they use a common /home?

This is not a real problem if you have completely separate installs and use the same user name on all of them. To save some space I use some common /home partitions meaning that the user name can not be the same or the ~/home directory would be the same along with the ~/.foo files and that causes conflicts if your installs are not identical. Therefore they all have unique user names and separate ~/home directories. As they are all installed on separate / partitions they are separate installs and so all the users are still using the uid and gid of 1000.

So, Should I use separate user names producing separate /home files or the separate user names using a common /home file? How could the latter be set up.

As a side issue - How does the OS system know where to put which items in which partition?

Also is swap a separate partition and should this be NFTS or Ext3/4?

Finally I am trying to get the Wi- fi working on the Debian live system. I have located the realtek drivers but cannot work out how to make them available to the Debian Live OS via my Ubuntu live stick through which I have access to the internet.

Originally Posted by jones5 I assume the word partition cannot be used interchangeably with directory and file? So, one can have a /home directory in / (for example) but it is not the same as a /home partition. In the /home partition you could also have a personal configuration directory or a data file?

Correct, /home directory and /home partition are two very different things.
The /home partition will contain a user directory (/yourusername) where your personal configuration files are stored.

Originally Posted by jones5 can a user have - /home, /data, and /personal configuration partitions all separate?

There is no such thing as a /personal configuration partition. If you have a separate /home partition, that is where your personal config files are stored. If you do not have a separate /home partition, your config files are stored on the / partition.

Originally Posted by jones5 If I did have two identical Linux OS using one for experimentation, how would they use a common /home? So, Should I use separate user names producing separate /home files or the separate user names using a common /home file? How could the latter be set up.

You are getting into a tricky area. What you do not want to do is set up two operating systems using the same /home partition with the same user name. As suggested, that should only be done with different user names.
Personally, I would never set mine up that way, because you would be creating problems with access to all your personal files (due to ownership problems). If jones1 creates a spreadsheet, it is owned by jones1, and jones2 would not have free access to it.
Personally, I do not create a separate /home - so my config files are stored on the / partition. It is not that difficult to back them up to an external drive and restore them to a new installation.
Another technique I have used is to install my new linux to my / partition without formatting the partition. That refreshes the OS while preserving the config files.

Originally Posted by jones5 Also is swap a separate partition and should this be NFTS or Ext3/4?

Swap is normally a separate partition, and the format is "linux-swap", not ext or NTFS.

MS insists on calling partitions drives which causes a great amount of confusion. Thing is that this is the way Windows sees them really. When it was just running word processors MSDos worked on floppies. There were snazzy boxes that had more than one floppy drive. Why is the first one C? Beats hell out of me.

A partition has contains file systems. Think of a building used for data storage in filing cabinets. There are rooms for old files for referrence, rooms for current documents, rooms for current spread sheets and so forth. Those rooms are separated by partitions just like your drive. The individual cabinettes represent directories.

One good solution would be to get an inexpensive external drive. You know it will boot from an usb port so that is not a problem. To be really safe you could even pull the hdd out of your box or, at least disconnect it although I don't think you can do that last in any laptop.

You could, with an external install the thing and boot from the external leaving your entire hdd untouched. I recommend removing the drive for the installation process because you could make a mistake.

One thing that WILL happen if you install on an external and don't know what you are doing is that grub will be installed on sda, your internal. While this is fine as long as the external is connected and turned on every time you boot, if it is not you will not be able to boot to just XP because the mbr will be looking for the grub files on the non existent, in this case, external. Grub will boot XP fine but only if the external is there to supply the files.

This would be the same situation as if you installed on the hdd but every time you boot that hdd is all there so the files needed to boot what ever is on the drive will always be there.

With the external, installed with the hdd removed, you will boot from which ever drive you choose in the bios boot menu just like with the usb stick.

Your D drive is probably mainly empty. You can shrink the recovery partition down to very little free space quite safely. You could shrink C from right to left and then shrink and move D from right to left. That should leave both fully functional and leave room for at least a small install.

I understand all these can be in a single partition /home.

You misunderstand. They cannot be on /home. You can install on just a / partition which will include /home as a directory. You cannot have any of your other directories within /home. /home, in the simplest of installs, is just another directory. Like any directory that has some thing following the /.

/, by itself, indicates your entire file system for the install. ALL files are under that. There is no way that / can be under /home because as far as the system knows (because /home on a different partition is mounted at boot due to being listed with its mount point in /etc/fstab) /home is completely connected to the rest of the files in the accustomed place. And it is. Its possition is simply defined by a different /dev/sd?, or more commonly now by a different uuid than / root is defined by.

You can have any number of partitions with different sub directories of / that you want. If you only have a one partition install it will only have / mounted. That is the only way it works because / is the file system. /home is not.

/home, like all other sub directories of /, has its uses but only as part of /.

As an example, I run my package update/upgrades for my other installs in a chroot environment. When I set that up I mount those systems in their own directory with in my /mnt (short for MouNT). They are all installed on 2 partitions. So when I mount their / partition, the only one I need to do those chores, I can see, for instance in /mnt/VictimR, the entire file system for VictimR. This includes a /home.

If I open that /mnt/VictimR/home it will have nothing in it. Why not? Because it is actually on a different partition than the / for VictimR is. If I open it from my file manager, giving my root password here under Debian as only Root can mount partitions, it shows up, fully populated as /media/sam/VictimH.

VictimR / is in sda12 while VictimH is in sdb8. sda8 includes the /home directories for Victims O, R, T and Crunch (a CrunchBang install) O is Debian testing with OpenBox, T is testing with Xfce, R is sid with Xfce and CrunchBang is, of course OpenBox and upgraded to Sid as Crunch is based on Debian (kind of mixed repos in its original form).

The /home in my /mnt/VictimR is not populated because the OS is not running and therefore has not mounted all the things in its /etc/fstab file which includes the lines;

# / was on /dev/sdf11 during installation
UUID=4295f4e0-5f90-4db4-bab8-18dd486264cd     /                ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1

# /home was on /dev/sdg6 during installation
UUID=aa15d094-5703-474b-b6cd-d7975194cece     /home            ext4    defaults          0       2

When you boot your bios looks in the MBR for a bootable system. It is directed to, in my case to /dev/sda10/boot. It is directed there because the install I am on now is handling the grub chores for my box. If I boot to VictimR the info comes from here.

If you install on you hdd grub will boot to Windows by looking at the /boot directory in your Linux install for instructions on what to boot, your /boot/grub/grub.cfg file will have the menu entry for XP as generated by the /etc/grub.d/00_headers and 30_os-prober scripts that shows up on your menu screen. From that entry it will boot to XP.

Currently your bios finds instruction to look for the MS boot sector.

The Grub entry will boot through there too but it will be running the hardware through the bios rather than the bios looking directly for the boot sector to get the menu entry for booting XP. The directions for creating that Win menu entry starts at about line 157 (Debian Sid implementation of Grub) in the /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober file. This will be somewhat different in non Debian distros as Debian has to include scripted instruction for the Ubuntu "wubi" installs that may be running grub.

Windows doesn't have a "kernel" as do most other OS's. It has a jumped up word processor OS that was capable of running Word Perfect and Lotus 123 that is now built out of patches to give it more functionality. If you look at the file manager in Windows you will see that what is occuring there is that when you call for an application the application takes over the work.

This is not how it works anywhere else. You open an application by calling on the OS to activate that application.

This is a considerable change from the application looking for what it needs in the OS. For one thing it makes actual security possible as the OS, not the application, is in charge of the process. This is a hard change to make in your thinking even if you never really thought about it while running MSDos or any of the Windows versions.

All of that is just an example of why the Linux file system is set up as it is and the imposiblily of maintaining any sort of sane (usable) paths to files if you try putting / in /home. Just will not work. /home is in / and there it HAS to stay no matter what partition it is physically located in.

Try putting directories (folders) from a Win install on different partitions and you will have a broken system because the OS isn't really in charge of the use of that file system. There the inmates run the asylum and they MUST, therefore, all be keep in a common holding pen (partition) called C. This is actually a very logical and great system. For something booted from a single floppy and not facing the internet.

The system will look for ALL user configuration files, no matter the number of users, in user land which is pretty much just the directory /home. That is why a separate /home will work as a nice way to keep those files separate in a reinstall situation for the new install to use.

Data partitions are set up for the convenience of the sys admin (you) and you can have as many as you want. I have 4 drives, sda has / partitions for my installs and a data partition. Sdb has /home partitions and a data partition. Sdc and sdd are single partition data drives.

All my installs have this in their /etc/fstab file;

# /media/FontOFiles was on /dev/sdi6 during installation
UUID=b058bf03-48e2-42da-84d0-62cf4dbc7ef4    /media/FontOFiles ext4    defaults          0       2

# /media/InfoSpring was on /dev/sdg10 during installation
UUID=4e351ba0-bd83-44b7-aa73-52e0550e1a77    /media/InfoSpring ext4    defaults          0       2

# /media/LinuxInfo was on /dev/sdf14 during installation
UUID=d9fa27f0-4985-4b44-93e7-843df728f377    /media/LinuxInfo  ext4    defaults          0       2

# /media/Store was on /dev/sdh6 during installation
UUID=3cabe959-aeb8-4530-b73a-81e1811456a7    /media/Store      ext4    defaults          0       2

Note 2 things;
A>the /dev/sd? doesn't match what I said the drives are. These drives were set up in external enclosures. The lines with the /dev/sd? designation is commented out and ignored by the system (# at the beginning of the line). The uuid is the same as it is built into the file system of the partition.
B>With this set up all my installs have the exact same path to files in those data partitions. That way I can simply transplant pertinent ~/.foo files to any of my installs that have that same applications and those directions to files will work fine. This is particularly of importance to me as I have a 20gig music collection (so far) and setting up play lists for any new install would be, to say the least, time consuming. As is I can simply retransplant any changes made from here to my other installs as needed. This also includes added menu entries in my file manager (Thunar) so that any shortcuts added to get to particular directories in any of the data partitions are also going to follow identical paths.

I can also use the same /etc/fstab entries for all data partitions as long as I remember to create the correct mount point in each installs /media directory. They could all be different but then the path would not be the same for all installs and the advantage of being able to transplant ~/.foo files would be lost.

Don't confuse / and /home as to where the system opperates from. It opperates from / and only /

Shared /home partition;
When your system boots it is looking for the /home/<user name> directory of the user logging in. This is where it will get the default DE, all application user configurations, the wallpaper to use, the system fonts to use, the individual default fonts for different applications, the settings for your terminal emulator(s) and so on and so forth.

This means that each install has to have a user with a unique user name. This is true if you have one install with many users. All have to have a unique user name so that they are using unique /home/<user name> files.

My VictimH which is currently /home to 4 installs has this in the /home directory;

sam@lounge:~$ ls /media/sam/VictimH
hed  lost+found  obie  thom  tom

lost+found is a file where fragments of information are stored if you ever do a file system repair just ignore it, it is in all partitions.

The names may look strange. They make sense to me so I can remember them easier. hed has the full name of Head Banger (CrunchBang). obie is Obie Jaun Younome for my Debian Testing OB install (and because I am a smartass that considers Star Wars as Comedy).

I could install one install of say, Sid, and have Xfce, OB and Mate installed. Have 3 users with different names, one for each of those DEs. This shared /home with the (currently) 4 installs means I can have different distros and/or versions of those distros. So there are 2 Debian testing based installs and 2 Sid based installs one of which is actually an upgraded respin of Debian: CrunchBang.

Manjaro, based on Arch, will be added soon (user man - Manny Moore).

This is NOT a common /home file. It is a common /home directory with separate and unique, non shared /home/<user name> sub directories. This is how all users on the multi user Unix decended OSs like Linux, BSD and Mac (actually BSD decended) all work with different users in a secure manner. In a shared partition you are simply taking advantage of that functionality to share a /home partition. That partition IS common and the /home directory IS common. The user files are not in the least common and can be set up to be invisible to all other users which would not in the case of your setup or mine to be convenient but would if you shared one of your installs or more with one or more other actual individual beings.

OS knowledge of what goes where;
The file system is defined by directories. Partitions that you make for separate directories are mounted in the /etc/fstab file. Therefore they are all known to the system as a whole.

When new packages are installed, by what ever method, the files included with them are either automagically installed where they belong by following the install script for the package included in .deb, .rpm or whatever other suffix is used by the package manager, by the compile build system or in the case of some packages, such as Seamonkey (Netscape type web browser/email client/website builder) by unpacking the compressed file in the desired directory (traditionally /opt (OPTional) and then one linked in /usr/local/bin/seamonkey so that you can actually launch the bugger from terminal, menu or other launcher such as a Xfce panel launcher in user land.

Wifi package for debian;
Get package and simply put it somewhere Debian can get to it like in your /home/<user> file for debian. Or /home/<user>/Downloads. On the desktop, where ever you want in user land. Install gdebi if it is not installed. Right click on the package and use the Gdebi option. You can also use "dpkg -i <package name>" I believe but am too tired to check man dpkg or my cheat sheet to make sure. At this time of night Gdebi seems the sensible and easy solution.

Swap format;
Open Gparted cursor over a partition and right click. That will bring up and menu>Format To and look at the options. One will be Linux-swap.

That is what the installer will look for and will format again on every install. You only need one no matter the number of installs. You only use one OS at a time so they can share that easily. As with any thing else used by the system it will be included in the /etc/fstab file.

swap is more related to /tmp in that the files are temporary. It is not even really mounted but used when your ram is over loaded. You can even change the definition of when the system uses swap by changing the swapage setting. The default setting should work fine on your box. Many people don't use a /swap at all. I do and recommend its use. I have, on this box with a mere 8gigs of ram, had some swap used when working many images in Gimp at once. Besides the system expects there to be /swap available and some installers will not install without one although you could remove it and the entry for it in /etc/fstab later. You will probably use it as that is a XP box and ram was not near as big as it is now.

By the way, nothing of real value should be stored on NTFS. It is not really a very reliable file system. Have done a lot of recovery from NTFS because it broke down. Have been able to recover all Linux fs types I have encountered to a level where you could, in a normal manner, simply copy the data to a clean system.

Originally Posted by jones5 Accepted that eventually a dual boot will be necessary. I think for now though, as I as I will be trying various Linux versions and my current lack of skill at sorting out partitions I will need to play safe. I am currently considering what size USB is best for this. My current 2 and 4 GB are too small if I include persistence in the installs. I am thinking 10GB or more and a minimum of two?

Rather than buying a few flash drives, consider buying an external USB hard drive. With something like the Toshiba Canvio 500 GB USB 3.0 Basics Portable Hard Drive - HDTB205XK3AA (less than $50 US) you could play with partitioning to your hearts' content. You could set up several 20GB partitions and install several different flavors of linux to experiment with, and you would still have plenty of space left on the hard drive to backup all your personal files from your internal hard drive.

A 120GB USB hard drive can be purchased for less than $30 US.

Also, an external hard drive functions better than a flash drive. Flash drives wear out faster with repeated writes/rewrites.

Originally Posted by TxLonghorn Rather than buying a few flash drives, consider buying an external USB hard drive. With something like the Toshiba Canvio 500 GB USB 3.0 Basics Portable Hard Drive - HDTB205XK3AA (less than $50 US) you could play with partitioning to your hearts' content. You could set up several 20GB partitions and install several different flavors of linux to experiment with, and you would still have plenty of space left on the hard drive to backup all your personal files from your internal hard drive. A 120GB USB hard drive can be purchased for less than $30 US. Also, an external hard drive functions better than a flash drive. Flash drives wear out faster with repeated writes/rewrites.

There is also my favored solution which is enclosures that you, admittedly, need to put a drive in yourself. If you have or can get some good used drives cheaply this is a wonderful way to go.

Either type of external is great in that it also gives you reliable large backup storage space. This has always been important but we store more and more on our computers so the need for backup becomes more critical all the time.

Also alows you to, as pointed out, try out partitioning. You can try different ideas on how to partition and see what works best for you.

Sticks are great. Good for moving small amounts of data. Can carry a live session in your pocket for use on just about any thing you run into. They are not much good for long time use.

The external gives you portability, although not in your pocket, and capacity.

With a live/persistent stick and a 500gig external you can recover data from just about any home or small business box.