Considerations before you install

[tdockery97]

The swap is not influenced by the kernel. Swap on one hand is a holdover from the days when computers had a small amount of random access memory. On the other hand, if you wish to hibernate your computer instead of turning it off, swap is necessary to hold the work you were doing in your last session. If you have lots of RAM and don't plan on using suspend/hibernate then it's up to you whether to keep or remove the swap partition.

[Spark]

The swap is not influenced by the kernel. Swap on one hand is a holdover from the days when computers had a small amount of random access memory. On the other hand, if you wish to hibernate your computer instead of turning it off, swap is necessary to hold the work you were doing in your last session. If you have lots of RAM and don't plan on using suspend/hibernate then it's up to you whether to keep or remove the swap partition.

Thank you for the reply.
That's why i quoted the first post that mention about the kernel stuff. Oh i don't really bothered with this, i rarely choose the suspend mode, (unlike windoze), here in linux i got brand new speed of booting & shutting down time .
May i ask one question sir, is it still recommended to have swap partition on the same drive?

[thatsallurspaceships]

Very good tutorial, Fred. Thanks alot. With this tutorial you know how to install Linux properly. Not like me who accidently installed it properly.

[Habitual]

If it wasn't for this "Fred Thread" I never would have installed LM using a dedicated /home as early as I did.

It oughta be a STICKY.

[A Future Pilot]

So I have two questions...

First...I saw several times he said you could expand partitions with unallocated space...Is that right?
Say you have:

swap 1GB
/ 15GB
/home 30GB
Unallocated

Could you make / 30GB without losing any data or anything? And how would you do that? Using something like GParted?

And my second question...I know Linux Mint now has a 64 bit version...how much RAM+swap is supported in that? Do you still want a swap the same size as your RAM? Also...what is the support for 64bit like? Are there any programs that work in x86 that don't work in x64?

Thanks!!

[tdockery97]

So I have two questions...

First...I saw several times he said you could expand partitions with unallocated space...Is that right?
Say you have:

swap 1GB
/ 15GB
/home 30GB
Unallocated

Could you make / 30GB without losing any data or anything? And how would you do that? Using something like GParted?

The easiest way is with GParted. As long as the unallocated space is to the right of your /home partition, you can just right-click on your /home partition and select "resize", then just grab the right side of the partition illustration and drag it to fill the unallocated space. Then just hit OK/Done, and click "Apply" up on the GParted toolbar.

[A Future Pilot]

Thank you very much! I didn't know that was possible!!!

Also one other question...how does ext4 do in case of power outs and such? Everything I've read about it seems to say it's better EXCEPT I heard that it wasn't quite as stable with improper shutdowns...is that true?

[Chris M]

The swap is not influenced by the kernel. Swap on one hand is a holdover from the days when computers had a small amount of random access memory. On the other hand, if you wish to hibernate your computer instead of turning it off, swap is necessary to hold the work you were doing in your last session. If you have lots of RAM and don't plan on using suspend/hibernate then it's up to you whether to keep or remove the swap partition.

I have had LMDE installed on my laptop since it went live. At the time, it had 2 gigs of memory. LMDE is on a small Linux partition (32 gigs total), and my swap partition is 3 gigs.

A few months ago, I installed 4 gigs of RAM. I did not re-partition - still have 3 gigs dedicated to the swap.

The beginning of this thread indicates to double your memory for the swap, but not go over 4 gigs. If I were to hibernate, I would kill running applications. Given my 32 gigs dedicated to Linux, am I perfectly fine to maintain 3 gigs for the swap? It sounds like it's a waste of space these days to dedicate a lot of room to the swap (especially if you are pressed for space). It even sounds like I could do less (say, 2 gigs without issue).

Also, I have 4 gigs of memory, but on-board/integrated (Intel) graphics. Would you install the 32-bit (pae kernel) or the 64 bit?

Thanks


Edit: tdockery97, never mind. I re-read it. 2 gigs would be plenty (and more than what's needed for 32-bit). Lots of RAM requires a small swap.

3) Swap partitions don't need to be any larger than 2X your system ram. And, the sum of system ram and swap shouldn't exceed 4 Gig. If it does, reduce the swap partition size to get back to 4 Gig. or less. If you have 4 Gig. of ram on a 32 bit system like Mint, make a very small swap partition anyway, as the kernel expects to have a swap partition available. Not having a swap partition slows the kernel down in certain situations. For this purpose, there is no need for the swap partition to be over 256 KB at most.

[Surreal]

Hello everyone!

After getting tired of Windows 7 and doing alot of distro-hopping to just try out which one works
best for me i have decided to install LM11 64bit.

I use my laptop mostly for browsing, listening to music, watching movies, abit of php programming, nothing exciting really

I've read almost all 26 pages in this topic and but i'd still like a second opinion on my partition scheme;

My harddrive is 320 GB.

primary sda1 -> /boot -> 256 MB -> ext2 or reiserfs
primary sda2 -> / -> 12 GB -> ext3
primary sda3 -> swap -> ?

sda4 EXTENDED PARTITION

logical sda5 -> /Home -> 10 GB -> ext3
logical sda6 -> DATA partition -> 75 GB -> ext3 For music
logical sda7 -> DATA partition -> Remaining GB's -> ext3 For Storing personal files, pictures, downloads

As you may have noticed i left the swap size empty, my system has 4 GB of RAM memory and like
i said i'll be using Linux Mint 64bit, what size should my swap be? As i never set my laptop to suspend or sleep mode.

The Data partitions will be mounted in my /Home directory to /Music and /Storage

What do you guys think of this partition scheme? Will it be an efficient and optimal setup?

Also when in the future new Mint releases become available, will i be able to update the system easily?


Regards,

Surreal

[Chris M]

Hello everyone!

After getting tired of Windows 7 and doing alot of distro-hopping to just try out which one works
best for me i have decided to install LM11 64bit.

I use my laptop mostly for browsing, listening to music, watching movies, abit of php programming, nothing exciting really

I've read almost all 26 pages in this topic and but i'd still like a second opinion on my partition scheme;

My harddrive is 320 GB.

primary sda1 -> /boot -> 256 MB -> ext2 or reiserfs
primary sda2 -> / -> 12 GB -> ext3
primary sda3 -> swap -> ?

sda4 EXTENDED PARTITION

logical sda5 -> /Home -> 10 GB -> ext3
logical sda6 -> DATA partition -> 75 GB -> ext3 For music
logical sda7 -> DATA partition -> Remaining GB's -> ext3 For Storing personal files, pictures, downloads

As you may have noticed i left the swap size empty, my system has 4 GB of RAM memory and like
i said i'll be using Linux Mint 64bit, what size should my swap be? As i never set my laptop to suspend or sleep mode.

The Data partitions will be mounted in my /Home directory to /Music and /Storage

What do you guys think of this partition scheme? Will it be an efficient and optimal setup?

Also when in the future new Mint releases become available, will i be able to update the system easily?


Regards,

Surreal

swap:

I think the bottom line is that if you plan on hibernating, your swap file should match your RAM size. If hibernating - 4 gigs.

You're using a laptop, though, and I don't know if you're using integrated/on board/shared memory graphics or not. That may play (slightly) into the equation.

But if you're using 64-bit, there's no 32-bit cap on memory, so you could make your swap partition fairly large, just in case. With hibernation, you'd go 4 gigs.

But if you're not going to hibernate, given the ample memory, you could go for a small swap size - especially given what you're do with your machine. Given tdockery97's post above, and a few others, you could do 1 gig and never run into a problem.

The one thing I gleaned from this is that a large swap really won't degrade performance. In fact, you'll probably never use it (unless you hibernate - in that case, it doesn't matter; 4 gigs).

You have enough space to do anything you want on your laptop (assuming no dual boot/small linux partition). If not hibernating, you could easily go 1 or 2 gigs swap and be on your merry way. But since you'll probable never go into swap, you could go even lower (1/2 gig).

There is no "right" or "wrong" answer (if considering 4 gigs or less). For you, a large swap partition is for necessity's sake if hibernating, or for extreme safety's sake if not hibernating.

[wm_commercial]

thanks for the explanation fred, it's admittedly a tad over my head but it helped clarify some things for me...

i have a couple of old machines i try to put a linux version on every other year or so and finally found mint (yay), this time i'm working with mint11 lxde. i'm about to embark on making this version work one way or another and i hope the forum is ready for me!! lol

i've got a zillion issues i've been trying to figure out (will search/post in other threads) but must've skipped over or just did not recognize a post indicating the best way to install for systems with small single hard drives, processors <1GHz & between 256-512RAM ... these are basically win98 machines i'd like to make useful again.

my test machine is a 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 1 80GB h/d ... out of the box this one slow boot/response time compared to mint 7 xfce i tried a bit ago, but i can't even figure out how to stop 2ea welcome screens/update managers from starting at each boot! only 1 volume ext4 (ver 1.0)

ran a tip for slower machines involving the terminal window and changing a setting from the default 60 to 10, but do not remember what it was, made a bit of difference..will dig it up if need be, but thought it was irrelevant considering i believe a fresh install is now in order again.

thanks in advance!

*EDIT*
since i was doing a fresh install decided to get the new dvd a go and was slapped by gparted right off the bat. i set my swap file first to just over a GB (with everything i've read and not understood and the arguements back and forth i figured this was a good starting point) with my #1 partition being root @ 15GB #2 = home @30GB and #3 with the balance being ntfs to see if that is part of my networking issues...

is this a reasonable start? i'd like to know about the size of swap for mint11 and approx 512 of ram.

could not get ldme to install, created the partitions using gparted as stated and it seemed to have tried to install on the ntfs partition, deleted it, ran install again, then it seemed to have installed partially because it would not boot, my best guess is /root was misplaced on the install..gave up and went back to the lxde to work out my networking issues...guess i'll be looking for a more clear explanation for working with gparted than the one i used.

here's the proper procedure for getting past gparted with lmde xfce: http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2010/12/28/manual-disk-partitioning-guide-for-linux-mint-debian-edition/

**EDIT
the link works, but the /boot partition is not required and it's recommended the /root partition be first, as for the size of your swap file, too many fingers in the pie, you're on your own.

[roylond]

I haven't had a chance to read all the post covering this subject. I have been using Linux mint 11 for two days and so far have enjoyed it much better than windoze which I would like to dump. My question is I did a automatic install with me just putting in my name etc. so should I reinstall and use the three partitions, swap / /home. Is it possible to repartition without reinstalling My drive is a new Seagate 500 Gb on a new machine I have built. Also I have installed the 32 bit version on a 64 bit machine because of drivers not being available. Sorry if I gone on too long but this is all new to me.

[un4td]

Well on a clean default install thru the wizard, I ended up with a large partition with home and everything else, and a 4gb swap file, in that order, on the disk.

Would performance be THAT much better if I put the swap file first? Or only for memory-intensive applications?

Thanks.

[Duderino]

swap ----Formatted as swap -----per above rules
/ ----------Formatted as ext3 ------10 – 12 Gig.

Data Partition1 ----Formatted as ext3 -----sized for data
Data Partition2 ----Formatted as ext3 -----sized for data
Data Partition3 ----Formatted as ext3 -----sized for data

Fred - I'm a little confused. Fresh installation of Mint 11, my partition is

Swap - 2GB
/ ------ Ext 4 12 GB
/home Ext 4 50GB

The rest is logical partition for future use, about 440 GB, ext 4.

What would be the mount point for your Data Partition1/2/3? Could I get my home folder to default to the data partitions? I would like one partition each for documents, music, and pics/video.


thanks

[mrjoeyman]

Yo duderino! I have supplied a link that will clear things up for you that I discovered on this forum. I was in the same frame of mind that you are at that point and gleaned some further great info from it. Check it out!

viewtopic.php?f=46&t=67609

[Duderino]

Yo duderino! I have supplied a link that will clear things up for you that I discovered on this forum. I was in the same frame of mind that you were at that point and gleaned some further great info from it. Check it out!

viewtopic.php?f=46&t=67609

Thanks man. That's exactly what I'm looking for.

I especially like the idea of separating /data from /home. On the machine in question I had upgraded from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 then 10.04. Replacing that with Mint 11 caused all sorts of problems. So I backed up my data and started with a fresh install of Mint.

Best of all I deleted the dual boot with Vista. I'm now free of that insidious OS. Mint community rocks.

[mrjoeyman]

Yes at first glance it seems that when upgrading the os, it would be a good thing to just dump your home folder contents right back onto the new system, but alas...trouble may lurk in dark places

With the data partition, all is okey dokey

Good luck!

[leae89]

First of all, I'm spanish speaker, so my english couldn't be as good as yours. My apologize in advance.

This question perhaps has been answered much time before, but I need to know: Does Linux Mint install alongside Windows as Ubuntu does?
I mean, Ubuntu is installed as another Windows program, and it's listed at startup, and my notebook promps me which OS to boot (Windows 7 or Ubuntu) after turning it on.

I need this answer before installing Mint 11.
Thanks.

[mrjoeyman]

Yes.

[sunewbie]

First of all, I'm spanish speaker, so my english couldn't be as good as yours. My apologize in advance.

This question perhaps has been answered much time before, but I need to know: Does Linux Mint install alongside Windows as Ubuntu does?
I mean, Ubuntu is installed as another Windows program, and it's listed at startup, and my notebook promps me which OS to boot (Windows 7 or Ubuntu) after turning it on.

I need this answer before installing Mint 11.
Thanks.

Hello,

I am an end user and have installed Ubuntu along with windows XP, as a dual boot option. Mint (main edition - please mention if you are using other edition) is derived from Ubuntu and has almost same installer as that of Ubuntu. So Installation is very similar to that of Ubuntu.

It will dual boot with Grub as a boot loader. Grub will automatically detect any other OS including windows and will list them in the boot loader screen. Alternatively you can also triple boot or quadboot so that you can have 2 / 3 linux and one windows. You need to surf it in order to have a triple boot i.e. to keep both ubuntu and mint. If you just want to install mint, just go for dual boot option during installation and things should go smooth.

I STRONGLY advise you to read Mint manual BEFORE installing.

Alternatively you can install any linux distro as a guest OS by installing it inside Virtualbox (safe way) if you are new to Linux.

Having is proper install has advantage than installing inside windows e.g. it can help in data recovery.

If you need any help, just post (a new topic) in forums. Do not ping or reply to very old thread which are dead for more than 12 months.

Enjoy Mint !!!