Newbie install help

[Guest]

I've got a laptop with a 160gb hdd partitioned into 2, one 50gb for vista and the other one for all storage of movies and games, backups and such.

Well i downloaded and burned the kubuntu 8.1 dvd image and during install i choose the step of manual managing the harddrive and i have to chose a system disk and a swap one, can i choose the swap for the 100 gig partition and it WON'T format it?

Should i Create a 3rd partition?

I have 2 gigs of ram so that suggests a 3gb partition for swap or can i use the 100gig for both storage and swap without it being deleted during this installation stage...

[dibl]

Re: Newbie install help

can i choose the swap for the 100 gig partition and it WON'T format it?

No.

Should i Create a 3rd partition?

Actually, you need two more partitions -- one for the OS and one for swap. It's OK -- you're allowed a maximum of four primary partitions on a hard disk drive, so it won't be a problem, assuming you have some free space.

I have 2 gigs of ram so that suggests a 3gb partition for swap or can i use the 100gig for both storage and swap without it being deleted during this installation stage...

If you hope to use "Suspend to RAM", aka hibernate, then probably 2.2G of swap is the largest you would ever conceivably need. As mentioned above, swap space actually gets written to, so it cannot double as data storage space. You need a separate partition for swap, 2.2G in size is plenty. Then you need a partition for the OS. Not knowing how full of data the 100G is, I would say the OS needs at least 8G to have some breathing room for ISO downloads and things like that. The actual Kubuntu installed OS, with a typical number of additional packages, will take roughly 5G of space. But you don't want to try to be "efficient" with the Linux filesystem space -- you need to make allowances for future increases for a variety of reasons. That's why I say make it no less than 8G, and 12G if you have the space to do so.