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[Tom <question78407@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Question #78407 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/78407

    Status: Open => Answered

Tom proposed the following answer:
The normal user is only allowed to write into the /home folder.  Many people put their /home folder on it's own partition to keep all their data and settings safely away from the main OS & programs.  Yes ext3 is probably the best for most of us.
http://embraceubuntu.com/2006/01/29/move-home-to-its-own-partition/

However it might be worth starting again with installing Ubuntu because it seems like you are getting in a right muddle.  Start from a LiveCd session so that you can use it to surf into here or elsewhere if you get stuck and need to look something up halfway through installing.  If you have trouble getting to a LiveCd session here's a guide
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD

Then just install using this guide for advice
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

but you might need to use "Manual Partitioning" to sort your partitions
out.  My recommendation for the best way to partition your drive to
maximise performance and to make it robust is to layout the partitions
like this

sda1 size = 2xRam "Primary Partition" format 'file-system' = 'linux-swap'
sda2 10Gb  "Primary Partition" file-system=ext3, set it's "Mount Point = /"
sda3 45Gb "Primary Partition" file-system = fat32 for Windows 
sda4 20Gb "Extended Partition" 
 . sda5 20Gb  "Logical Partition" file-system = ext3, set it's "Mount Point = /home" 

Don't bother to have a separate /boot because it doesn't really help
much except on certain ancient hardware setups and it does make things
unnecessarily complicated.  Note that Ubuntu probably can't make an ntfs
partition for your Xp so when you install Windows you'll need to
reformat that fat32 from within the Windows installer.  There is a bug-
report about this issue and apart from that Ubuntu is great at dealing
with stuff on ntfs partitions.  The reason for putting the /home at the
end of the drive and inside an extended partition is to increase
flexibility for the future.  Drives can only have 3 primary partitions
and an extended one (or 4 primary ones) so the 4th partition on a drive
needs to be an extended partition in case you later find a need for more
partitions as an extended partition can contain a lot of partitions but
a primary one can't.  You'll notice that the / partition doesn't really
need more than 5Gb but giving it plenty of extra room doesn't hurt at
this stage.  If there is any extra space then give it to Windows.  Note
also that i've arranged to have the swap and the OS's at the front of
the drive where read/writes happen faster.  The data is relegated to the
end of the drive because it tends to get cached (queued up) in ram and
swap whereas read/writes to the OS tend to be unpredictable so the
faster read/write times are more important to system files rather than
data.  Also note that while Ubuntu can happily use data stored on your
Windows side Windows can't read linux data so i tend to keep most of my
data in Windows partitions so that both OS's can read everything ;)

Oh, if you are going to install Windows 2nd then this guide might help after that
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot#Recovering%20GRUB%20after%20reinstalling%20Windows

Also you might want to work through this guide to sort all your multimedia straight after installing Ubuntu
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu
i tend to go with non-free at first.  It doesn't usually invoke costs but does make things a lot easier until you really find your way with OpenSource ;)

Then these guides might help clarify a few things, the 1st is just for dipping into occasionally rather than reading all the way through
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromWindows
http://librenix.com/?inode=21
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Antivirus
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo
the rest are just some background reading :)


Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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