First of all, I want to thank the many smart and talented people who help all of us noobs out there. I really mean it, THANKS!!

I am trying to migrate from XP to linux.

1) What is the purpose of the "swap partition" when you install ubuntu? How big does it really need to be? I've done countless XP installs and don't remember seeing anything like this in there.

2) Can one use Firefox in a KDE environment? I thought that was a gnome thing.

3) Using Asus A8N-SLI Premium mobo and the audio sounds so "bassy" In windows, it sounds flawless. I've adjusted the EQ and does very little to bring up the treble. It sounds the same in Suse 10.0. If I can get this issue resolved, I will be getting rid of windows!

I have many more questions, but I will start with these.

Thanks so much!

1) The swap partition is a place on the hard drive to be used as Virtual Memory. This basically means that programs can be larger than the physical memory on your system and they will still run. It is called swap, because pages of memory are swapped between the RAM and the swap partition. One of the reasons that Linux does not suffer from disk fragmentation is because the swap space is on its own partition rather than a temporary file like Windows.

Most people will tell you that swap needs to be 2x your physical RAM. This is true up to 512Mb, but 1Gb and over you can get away with the same as your RAM. You need at least the size of your RAM if you want to use ACPI software suspend.

2) You can use any Gnome program under KDE and vis-versa, providing the required libraries are installed. Since you are using Kubuntu, don't worry about this. The Adept package manager will make sure that everything is installed correctly. Firefox is not installed by default, so you will need to use "sudo aptitude install firefox" or find the Firefox package in the Adept package manager.

3) Can't help you with the sound. Try playing around with Alsa. Try "alsamixer" to adjust the various mixer settings, and "sudo alsaconf" to reconfigure alsa.

I hope this helps
--Ian

You will never see the swap partition under Win because its functions are covered by the file
pagefile.sys

an hidden file located in c:\

For the sound: try reducing the mixer setting PCM and all that are way up a little bit. Check if "Tone" is enabled (if yes disable it). There should also be controls for bass and treble. Check if those are both in their default middle position.

Concerning Firefox: Prefer installing programms with Adept/Synaptic/apt-get, it usually causes less troubles and is easy to use.