Recomened swap/partitioning for ubuntu.

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Zarok Aleon

Zarok Aleon

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Oct 21, 2013
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Hey guys, I am trying to install ubuntu, But i am not sure how much space to allocate for each partition. i have like 400 GB to work with all a chunk out of my 2 TB HDD. I am running windows 7 off of a 120 SSD. I have 8 GB of RAM, but plan to upgrade to 16 GB soon

So I am here on the partition screen, and I see that I need swap. but I am not sure how much or if i can change it. Also I am not sure whether to choose logical or Primary. also which file systems for which one.s or the locations, beginning of space or end of this space?

I need to know what sizes for each one and what like / things and what sizes
 
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ksham
Linux uses very little space, at least the base system. I can install Ubuntu minimal version and it will only use up 3GB of disk space. That is tiny compared to the 20GB of space Windows use. Ubuntu programs are also rather small. So you really don't need a bunch of space. I would say 50GB is plenty. You can always increase it later on. I have an Ubuntu VM that's only 20GB large and I've used up 6.9GB of it. So it really depends what you will use Ubuntu for. 50GB should be plenty IMO.

For swap, it's up to you. Swap is just extra space dedicated for use when you have used up all your RAM. Swap is space on the hard drive so it is very slow compared to data in RAM. A safe number is to set it to the same amount as your RAM, or you can...
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ksham

ksham

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Linux uses very little space, at least the base system. I can install Ubuntu minimal version and it will only use up 3GB of disk space. That is tiny compared to the 20GB of space Windows use. Ubuntu programs are also rather small. So you really don't need a bunch of space. I would say 50GB is plenty. You can always increase it later on. I have an Ubuntu VM that's only 20GB large and I've used up 6.9GB of it. So it really depends what you will use Ubuntu for. 50GB should be plenty IMO.

For swap, it's up to you. Swap is just extra space dedicated for use when you have used up all your RAM. Swap is space on the hard drive so it is very slow compared to data in RAM. A safe number is to set it to the same amount as your RAM, or you can double it, triple it, etc. It doesn't really matter because what's 8GB, 16GB, or even 32GB in terms of space anyway? It's really little. 8GB swap should be plenty. Unless you're playing a flash game that takes up all your RAM, I don't think you'll run any Linux software (outside of VMs) that will hog up 8GB of RAM.

It does not matter whether you choose primary or logical. Linux can boot from either option, unlike Windows.

For filesystem type, select ext4. Keep in mind that Windows cannot read ext4 filesystems natively. If you want to read an ext4 partition on Windows, try using a software called Paragon. Linux can mount and read your Windows partition without third party software. You just need to mount it.

I would not mess with beginning of space or end of space on an existing partition (your Windows partition). What you want to do first is reduce the size of your Windows partition by about 50GB (or however many you want to allocate to Ubuntu). Then once you have shrunk Windows's partition down, format the unallocated 50GB of space and create an ext4 partition. From there, select that partition (and use the whole partition) as your install path for Ubuntu.
 
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Solution
ksham

ksham

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Mar 29, 2013
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Once you have Ubuntu installed, it should have installed GRUB (which is default unless you told it otherwise), which is a boot loader. When you restart your computer, if it boots you straight into Ubuntu and does not provide a screen where you get to choose which operating system to boot into, then GRUB is probably not installed or properly installed. In this case, simply boot into a Linux LiveCD (it doesn't have to be an Ubuntu LiveCD) and just load it up and re-install GRUB from there. It's a really quick and simple process.
 
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ksham

ksham

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If you want to run them simultaneously, then you want to run a Virtual Machine. Select a host -- either Windows or Linux. Install VirtualBox or VMWare onto it and install the operating system. With dual boot, you need to restart into the operating system.

Keep in mind that running an operating system as a virtual machine does have downsides. Installing drivers for certain hardware is not fully 100% supported. Graphics card acceleration is virtualized and you will not get good performance.
 
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Zarok Aleon

Zarok Aleon

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how do i make my computer boot into windows by default instead of booting into Ubuntu when i boot the computer and then having to use the boot order to choose windows then go through grub. can i bring it to windows by default and then decide to boot into windows when i want? since i use mostly windows?
 
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skittle

skittle

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The easiest way is to simply set GRUB to boot into windows by default. (strongly recommend this method)

Alternatively you can reinstall the windows bootloader to the MBR via the Windows installation disk boot repair tool, THEN use EasyBCD to create an Ubuntu boot entry.
http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/
 
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