Installing Ubuntu Linux on my Dell Laptop?

[qalfazarath]

I have a Dell Inspiron with 120 Gigs of hard drive and I want to install Ubuntu. How do I partition the hard drive, what kind of partitions should I make, and how much?I also heard about linux swap and ext3 partitions. Do I have to make several separate partitions to run Linux?

[Mike D]

The ubuntu installer will resize and create the partitions for you. You need to judge the sizes (i would go with at least 10 gigs for the root, swap depends on ram but just make it 512-1gig and you should be good ), but for a normal install of ubuntu i would reccomend at least 2 partitions, one ext3 for root ( / ) and one for swapNote that this will not allow you to share files between windows and linux. If you would like to do this, make another partition and format it fat32 so windows can read it as well as linux, and for the mount point in the installer, make it /files or /whatever. there are many good guides over at ubuntuforums.org

[Clark G]

get a free laptop on this site instead of buying retail

www.whitelip.info

[savashviro]

Just let the installer do the partitioning. It will give you a choice of guided preserving your existing data, guided using the whole disk, or manual. Either of the guided installs will create a swap partition of the needed size and fill the rest of the space with a single ext3 partition. That's all Linux ever needed. Complex partitioning schemes are for server admins, not desktop users.

[Italianman]

I used partition magic to do this, so im sry if im not of much help. The Ubuntu software that your recieved should be on what they call a live cd. you simply put in the cd, boot from it and it starts what ubuntu will look like when it is install. on the desktop you will see an install icon, double click it and follow the instructions. It will let you partition your drive. ext3 is the newest version filesystem for linux users. the swap is good for linux because linux operates better when it is in the front of the drive. you only need the one partition. 30gb should be more than enough because there is not as many things to install on linux as windows.