New Box--Intel Chipset--what to do?

[wesireal]

Just got a new box without an operating system.I want to install soon to appear linuxmint 5 (ubuntu latest). I have no experience of Linux.The system is;

1. Chipset; Northbridge; Intel 945G/945GC A2
Southbridge;Intel ICH7.

Quistion. Will linuxmint install and work without problem or will I have to tweak?(I am already trembling at the thought)

Audio; Onboard---ALC888 audio codec.

Quistion; will the audio work ? I am willing to buy and install a not expensive audio card if it will definitely work. I am Tone Deaf, so quality of sound is of no importance. Kindly recommend a card that will work.

Thanks in advance.

[Zwopper]

I have the same hardware on one of my computers and it works flawlessly using Linux Mint 4, all versions (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Fluxbox) so far!

[wesireal]

Thank you.

What about audio? Is your audio the same?

[Zwopper]

Yep!

[Fred]

wesireal,

If you intend to put windows on this machine, make sure you install it first.

If you are making a clean install I suggest you make a swap partition first. That partition should be no more than 2 x the amount of ram you have. Also, the total of your ram and swap should not exceed 4 Gig. If it does reduce your swap size accordingly.

Create an ext3 formatted partition between 10 - 12 Gig for your install. There is no need for it being larger, if you do it like I suggest. A smaller partition is a faster partition.

Create one or more ext3 partitions to hold your data, 20 or 30 Gig each. Whatever your needs require, keeping in mind the last sentence in the above paragraph.

After you install your system, it is a simple matter to mount your data partitions in your home directory.

This will give you a fast desktop system that will keep your data safe on its' own partitions, but still make it easily available to you. It also has the advantage of making an upgrade to a later version or different distro a piece of cake.

Fred

[wesireal]

Thank you Fred;

I was given to understand in another thread that the first partition should be boot, about 500 mb,thenroot about 10gb and then swap which should be RAMx2. I am a little confused about this . I have 4GB of ram. Exactly,how much should the swap partition be?

There will be only linuxmint on the box with a 320gb hdd.

I would want a video partition and then sevseral sub partitions or should I create a seperate partition for each type of video?

Music.

Plain data partition for correspondence etc so on so forth.

Thank you all for the quick help you have provided.

Incidently I could not find theis thread and had to resort to the Search function to get to Fred"s reply that I had not yet read. Where is my thread

[Fred]

wesireal,

There are so many different ways to partition that I may have recommended to you or someone else the 500 MB /boot partition. It would be slightly faster with the boot partition. What I gave you above would be slightly simpler, but equally workable.

If you have 4 Gig of RAM you wouldn't ordinarily need a swap partition using conventional rules. However, Linux expects to have a swap partition so I would create one. It isn't that you will be able to use it as more memory but because the kernel expects to have one available.

500 MB is plenty of space in a boot partition. In fact, it wouldn't hurt, in your case, to reduce it and make a swap partition out of it too. With partitions that small it doesn't matter which comes first. If you are going to use a /boot partition I would probably put the boot first just out of habit, old dogs, new tricks, and stuff like that.

So what do we have?

/boot ext2 300 MB
swap swap 200 MB
/ (root) ext3 10-12 Gig.

Data partitions ext3 20-40 Gig.?

As many as you think you need and of whatever size you think they need to be. Just keep in mind that the smaller the partition is, the faster it is.

You don't need to dedicate the entire disk now. You can leave unallocated space and expand a partition or add another partition as needed later.

Does that clear up stuff for you?

Fred

PS: I have no clue what happened with my post, relative to your thread. I though I was posting correctly.

[wesireal]

Thank you. It is now bigining to make sense.

There was no problem with your reply, it was just that I could not find the thread listed. So I used the search and then found your post. Glad I did. All is well now.

I shall get on with the task and after all has been installed will report back with details.

[Fred]

wesireal,

Good luck. If you get bogged down or questions pop-up don't hesitate to come back and ask me. Just use this thread or remind me. I am not that good with names and my old brain doesn't work and remember as good as it once did.

Fred