Partitioning your hard drive and installing Ubuntu

THE AIM OF THIS SECTION:

To set up an Ubuntu PC that 

1. is stable
2. is up to date
3. runs fast
4. works well with other operating systems
5. can be re-installed without loss of data
6. can be re-installed without loss of tweaks and personal preferences

PRE-INSTALLATION:

Once you have established that your computer will run Ubuntu, you need to decide how to partition your hard drive.

What to consider:

• Will I want to dual boot?
• Ubuntu LTS or six-monthly release?
• Where to store DATA?
• How big should my /home partition be?
• Do I want space for other Linux distributions?

SHOULD I DUAL BOOT WITH WINDOWS OR MAC OSX?

In the interest of simplicity, here is my advice, which we'll follow today.

• If you are new to Linux and you DO NOT have a Production machine with your current OS installed and configured, then you should dual boot with Windoze or Mac OSX.
• Create a separate partition for your data, label it DATA, and mount it at /media/DATA
• Your home folder should be at least 15GB big, especially if you intend to use Virtualbox.  You can get away with 10GB, but unless you have a very small hard drive (80GB or less), don't restrict yourself.
• Give yourself an empty partition for another Linux distribution.

UBUNTU LONG-TERM SUPPORT (LTS) VS. 6-MONTHLY RELEASES

A defining feature of Ubuntu is that a new version of it is released every 6 months, which includes a new LTS version every two years.  This distinguishes Ubuntu from rolling-release distributions and also until recently from its parent Debian, which used to have no set release cycle.

	Rolling Release	Version Release	Release When Ready
Examples	Gentoo, Arch	Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE	Debian Stable
System updates	Very quick	Moderate	Slow
New software	Very quick	After a few months*	Can be a long wait
Security	Rapid exposure to flaws, rapid access to fixes	Minimal exposure to flaws, generally rapid access to fixes	Minimal exposure to flaws, variable access to fixes
Stability	Unstable	Usually stable	Rock solid

WHY DOES UBUNTU RELEASE A NEW VERSION EVERY SIX MONTHS?

Every operating system has to balance two considerations: to stay updated and to be stable.  Every update introduces potential instability, and not updating would mean security holes would remain exposed and software would remain old.  In the world of FOSS, where the tendency for software to be even more of a work in progress than in proprietary software, this can be particularly frustrating.

Canonical determined for a number of reasons that releasing every six months allows Ubuntu to strike a balance between these opposing considerations.  So you can think of it like this:

If Ubuntu were a rolling distribution and kept on updating everything all the time, it would be unusable for most people.

If Ubuntu were a release-when-ready distribution, it would get outdated very quickly for many home users.

1. Software updates -- new versions of software, new software packages, new programs
2. Security updates -- patches to address security flaws
3. System updates -- usually behind-the-scenes updates
4. User interface updates -- most notable in Ubuntu, which is undergoing some dramatic changes in its look and feel

SHOULD I USE THE LONG-TERM SUPPORT RELEASE OR SHOULD I UPDATE EVERY SIX MONTHS?

Long-term Support 6-monthly Release Stability More stable Less stable Cool, new packages Mostly backported Included Support for new hardware Mostly backported Included Support for older hardware Included Mostly included Pretty UI changes Sometimes backported Included PPAs Included Included

As the idea is to get you started with a machine that runs reliably, and no prior knowledge of how to fix things is assumed, I recommend Ubuntu LTS until you become advanced enough to feel that you want to upgrade to a new release.  One thing to bear in mind about Ubuntu is its Personal Package Archive system (PPA), which allows you to subscribe to all the updates of a package or set of packages.

WHAT THE PPA MEANS FOR YOU:

If you want to stay up-to-date with a particular program, e.g. Firefox Beta, you can add the PPA to your sources list and get the newest version of Firefox and otherwise have the rest of your system as it is.  This to me is the best of both worlds.

WHERE TO STORE MY DATA?

By default, your data is stored in the user folder of your home partition, for example:

/home/clockworkpc/Documents

However, should you decide to re-install Ubuntu into the same partition, you will have to ensure that all of your data is backed up to another drive or partition, otherwise it will be lost.  This will give you a rough idea -- ignore the percentages:

USING GPARTED:

You can partition your hard drive during the installation of Ubuntu, but I strongly recommend doing this beforehand.  Every live CD comes with GParted installed.

Here is what my HDD looks like:

Partition Scheme: MS-DOS

No.	Size	Type	File System	Label	Mount Point
1	80GB	Primary	NTFS	Windows	/media/Windows
2	MAX	Primary	NTFS / EXT4	DATA	/media/DATA