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[Tom <question79072@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Question #79072 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/79072

Tom posted a new comment:
Yes, lol.  Linux is about freedom OF choice.

If you haven't yet bought all the ram and everything then i would make
sure to buy as little as possible but get good quality & a large value
stcik of whatever you do get - especially as it sounds like you are
starting off without Windows.  Linux is very efficient with ram so it's
more important to have empty slots on your mbord to allow for future
expansion.  2 paired sticks are meant to have significant advantages in
performance but for linux even one old stick is likely to be plenty.  I
would consider getting just one stick of something quite decent that
will last years.  At some point in the future ram sticks will make what
we use now look like a joke so it's worth having a potential for easily
adding more sometime far off in the future ;)  I'm not an expert on ram
but it sounds like your plan is what i would aim for too.

Xp has the advantage that it works really quite well now and also it's
quite likely that you have access to a legit copy to install.  I'm not
sure i would buy it tho.  Scratch that - i know i wouldn't buy it but i
wouldn't spend much on Windows7 either.  I would only get either if i
could get it at a good price, ie free or something.

Wierdly Ubuntu's gparted can't seem to make ntfs partitions and
sometimes struggles a bit.  I've posted a bug-report about this.  The
problem is not with GPartEd as even very early ancient versions on other
distros have no trouble at all, as don't the ultra latest gparted's on
other distros *shrugs*.  That's the only reason i'm suggesting setting
the Windows partitions up as fat32 temporarily - the Windows installers
can do a quick format to change that to ntfs easily.  It doesn't involve
writing a lot of 0's to the partition or anything dumb like that, it's
just a label in the partition table.  Ubuntu can be made to deal with
ntfs by installing "ntfsprogs" and "ntfs-3g", which begs the question
"Why aren't these included as standard" lol, *sighs & shakes head*

I thought this as a starting layout

sda1 15Gb Primary ext3 for /
sda2 20Gb Primary ext3 for /home 
sda3 large Primary for Windows inside a virtual machine temporarily as fat32
sda4 12Gb Extended Partition
 . sda5 5.5Gb unallocated, waiting to have fun with sometime as a sandbox
 . sda6 6.5Gb Logical Partition for linux-swap

and perhaps changing to this after you get the large data storage drive

sda1 15Gb Primary ext3 for /
unallocated
sda3 large Primary ntfs with a virtual machine continuing to use it
sda4 12Gb Extended Partition
 . sda5 5.5Gb unallocated still
 . unallocated

sdb1 large Primary for /home
sdb2 6.5Gb linux-swap

Note that Window can't read ext3 partitions at all, well except for shared folders seen over a network but that depends on the linux being booted into so that it can share stuff out.  However Gadolinio just showed us that a /home partition can be formatted as an ntfs partition and then Ubuntu has no trouble using that - which gives the advantage that Windows can see it quite happily too.  He showed a bit more than that too, see near the end of this thread
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/78407
Starting from his post "Waaaaiit" just after my answer that got marked as solving the problem there.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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