what is the Installed OS size and which version should i choose

[mastablasta]

thank you. i guess i will try to borrow a 16 Gb USB drive or get get new one. i need it just to test compatibility.

i will look into Neon. I am not sure i desperately need the latest, but would sure like to have a descent version that won't give me too much trouble to start with. also just in case latest nvidia drivers work better with new kernel and such.

Nouveau works for basic stuff (tried it in live session), but i plan to later add some wine "applications" for the kids, so i was hoping nvidia drivers would work at least descent for a few old games.

AMD was in this PC before but died, and new ones for some reason didn't want to work with this PCIe socket, so i ended up with nvidia. i need it to just run a couple more years until i can get enough money to get them a new or a descent used laptop.plus i hate to throw away things that work just fine.

i already have a server, and an old motherboard that could also be used for server.

[oshunluvr]

My opinions;

Re #1: I believe the installer will require 8GB of available space. I don't know if there's a way around that. Of my latest virtual installs, 18.04 used 5.3GB and KDEneon User Edition used 4.5GB.

Re #2: If you want a reliable experience, install 16.04 and wait until 18.04 matures for several months. You'll notice most of the problems reported here are with 17.10. In my experience, this is obvious and typical - the first 3-4 months of a new release are the most buggy. If you think you want 18.04 soon, I's still wait until June or July before installing it for daily use.

Putting it all together, assuming you only use 8GB for the install, you won't have much room for anything else including personal data so I'm assuming this is more of a learning adventure than a daily machine to use. I mentioned KDEneon User Edition above because it's a good compromise between 17.10 and having the latest KDE/Plasma 5 software - more reliable because it uses a 16.04 core, but KDE is as up-to-date as 17.10. It also install with almost no extra software - you're expected to add anything you need yourself - so it starts out smaller.

As far as nVidia goes: their drivers are getting worse as the years go by but Nouveau has been getting better. I'd go without the nVidia driver if possible.

[mastablasta]

I need to migrate the old WinXP to a dual boot system.

Before i do that i need to make sure the GPU will work well. It's an nvidia GT730. drivers are available but i could not get it to work on the 14.04 on another PC. a very similar and possibly the very same issue was discovered by another Ubuntu forums member. it would appear the nvidia drivers recognise the GPU wrongly and the end result it blinking cursor on boot.

anyway, before compromising the working OS i plan to do a full install to an external USB drive. in the past i know that 8 Gb was enough for OS install (especially if you made swap 1 Gb or less). but OS images have grown since then. while i have a USB drive which has around 7,5 Gb capacity. or something like that

1. how much disk space do i need to do a full install and to be able to add proprietary drivers to it? just that, no other software... i believe at this point /swap is not needed or it can be reduced, since the PC has 4 GB ram.

2. just asking for opinion here: should i go with 16.04 or 17.10 and then upgrade to 18.04 for its lifetime? i do not have experience with nvidia and i don't know how fast they will drop support for this card. another thing that is making me think, is the "bad press" going around about 17.10 release, which is supposedly not as good as 17.04 was.

i am still rocking the 14.04 LTS on the other two PC's and that has worked fine, but i am thinking since this one is a clean start maybe it deserves the latest. the PC is otherwise very old (single core AMD) that was upgraded through time. i think only 2 sticks of RAM, CPU and the frame box itself are the only things that were originally there. it's just that it works perfect for all the needs. just the WinXP OS is hard to maintain security wise (i use antivirus, firewall and up to date browses with various script blockers). so my plan (for some time now) is to move online activities to Linux and keep the games on XP along with a few very particular online stuff that maybe still needs windows support.