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[Tom <question74437@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Question #74437 on grub in ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub/+question/74437

Tom proposed the following answer:
Once you have resized sda1 down to about 24Gb(ish) then create one big
new partition filling up all the unallocated space at the end of the
drive.  Make this an Extended partition rather than a primary one.
Notice the difference?

Inside the Extended partition make a 'Logical' partition of 5Gb with
'file-system' "ext3" again.  After it make another "ext3" Logical
partition filling the remaining drive-space.  This last partition can be
a bit larger but there's not a lot of point because you're going to be
able to use all the data that's on the windows side anyway so it's worth
keeping most of your stuff over in Windows :)

Right, this has set things up to install Ubuntu like this
sda2 /boot
sda3 linux-swap
sda1 Xp on hpfs/ntfs
sda4 Extended partition containing
 . sda5 /
 . sda6 /home

Note that /boot and /home both build up from the "Root" of the folder-
structure that starts with /  This is not something that can be done
with Windows and it's a very difficult flexibility to 'wrap your head
around' so in a way i guess i'm asking you to trust me.  The easiest way
to think of a Windows way of explaining is that imagine you had a large
music collection, too large to fit on your current hard-drive so that
you bought another hard-drive just to fit it all on.  In Windows, inside
your "My Documents" folder, or alongside it is a folder called "My
Music" - wouldn't it be great if opening the "My Music" folder took you
to the music on your new hard-drive? And then going "up" would take you
back to the drive where everything else is? Well it can be done in
Windows but involves a lot of hacking around with the infamous registry.
In linux it's easy & that's the type of thing we are doing here with
/boot and /home being on different partitions :)

The reason /boot needs to be on a separate partition is that your
hardware needs the boot sector to be in the first 1024Mb of the hard-
drive.  Putting linux-swap near the front of the drive gives a
performance increase because the read/write speed is faster at the front
of the drive and in your machine the ram & swap are going to be doing a
LOT of work together.  Having the /home folder on a separate folder
gives extra stability to the system - you will be able to easily install
a different version of llinux to replace Ubuntu or perhaps reinstall
Ubuntu over the top of itself if you ever need to without having to
worry about backing up your data & settings as they will all remain
untouched in the /home partition ;)

So it should work out quite well :))
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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