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Old 08-15-2008, 01:34 PM   #1
shiatsu
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dual booting Ubuntu and SUSE


Hi,

I have a PC with a single 80GB hard drive. I want to dedicate the machine exclusively to Linux and would like to install both Ubuntu 8.04 and SUSE 11.0

Can I install them both on the same hard drive and dual-boot?

If so are there any particular requirements to follow during installation?

Any suggestions on the partitioning arrangements would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Alan
 
Old 08-15-2008, 06:56 PM   #2
Bobber47
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Sure, you can set up a dual-boot quite comfortably on that hardware. You can split the HD into 4 partitions: SUSE, Ubuntu, home (common), and swap (common). Maybe 20,20,<40,~1 GB? (depends on your RAM, prefs). It may not matter, but I'd install SUSE and then Ubuntu.
 
Old 08-16-2008, 03:07 AM   #3
shiatsu
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobber47 View Post
Sure, you can set up a dual-boot quite comfortably on that hardware. You can split the HD into 4 partitions: SUSE, Ubuntu, home (common), and swap (common). Maybe 20,20,<40,~1 GB? (depends on your RAM, prefs). It may not matter, but I'd install SUSE and then Ubuntu.

Thanks for the reply. Based on my limited experience with Linux I recall that you can't have two root partitions on the same hard drive but Linux always wants to install it's system files into a \partition? Is there a danger that system files/settings set up by SUSE would then be over-written by Ubuntu on the second install?

My system is an Athlon XP2400 with 1.5GB RAM. Should the swap partition be the same size as the physical memory?

Thanks again
Alan
 
Old 08-16-2008, 08:18 PM   #4
Bobber47
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No, there isn't any limit on the number of partitions used as root (/) on a single HD. Only one is used at a time by that system, and the others are just recognized as extra partitions (irrelevant what they have). When you install each system, just confirm you are choosing the respective partitions (1-4) as you need. You can define them all during the first install, though teh second will reformat (not change size) those it will use when running its own install. You may run into UUID conflicts if the fstab files indicate partitions to mount by that instead of /dev/X, but that's easy to fix.

A single swap partition should be recognized by all and used automatically (one at a time). How large depends on your intended use. Some say 2x RAM, some 1x RAM, but some would say none is needed with 1.5 GB of RAM. Some systems will create a swap file within their root partition if you need that function and don't have a physical swap set up already. I ran Ubuntu with 512 MB RAM and no swap initially (Dell P4, 2.8GHz, 80GB HD, WinXP/Ubuntu/Puppy - much like yours), and never had any issues with routine use. Later I upgraded RAM to 2.5 GB and added a 5GB swap on a second HD, but don't think I ever really use it. Depends on what you do though. With office stuff, not likely; with lots of image/video manipulation, more likely. I'd probably play it safe and allocate 3 GB for swap, just in case: you're not sacrificing much anyway.

Some refs:
http://www.linux.com/feature/121916

Last edited by Bobber47; 08-16-2008 at 08:24 PM. Reason: extras
 
Old 08-17-2008, 05:38 PM   #5
shiatsu
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Thanks for all the info. I'll give it a go and see what happens.
 
  


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