The best way to Install Linux

[Elfy]

I liked that so much and honestly I was looking for such advice.
However, is it safe to do that without losing anything? I've never tried it yet but I'm willing to.

I was touch unwilling as well - but backed up home ( which if course I always do anyway ... ) and tried it out - all was there.

It did help my peace of mind to know that all my data is actually on other drives and just symlinked to the ubuntu home folders.

[Elfy]

I found a guide on the internet, so it'd be such thing as

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/4096Mb.swap bs=1M count=4096

To start it off?

You'd have to ask someone else I'm afraid - being a mod here is not a symbol of your technical knowledge EDIT - - yea that looks about right for a 4096Mb swap file

I'm just a really laid back guy who uses linux (usually ... )

[Joshwaa]

You'd have to ask someone else I'm afraid - being a mod here is not a symbol of your technical knowledge

I'm just a really laid back guy who uses linux (usually ... )

Haha! Yeah, I made a swap file, I followed a guide on the Ubuntu Documentation and it says there is now swap space..

SwapTotal:       4194300 kB
SwapFree:        4194300 kB

wahey.
I gave it that much space, even though I'm only on a 30gb Partition, I have 4gb of ram.

[amjjawad]

Well I have one partition for my Win7 backup, another one labeled "System Reserved" then I have a 30gb Ubuntu partition which has the bootloader installed on that partition and a EasyBCD loader as my main loader so if I need to I can just delete the partition. I'd get a Swap space partition but I can't as I already have 4 partitions.. hmm.. if anyone knows if system reserved is useless then let me know through PM or whatever

I assume you have 4 Primary Partitions that's why you can't get more partitions.
Ubuntu needs minimum 2 partitions (root and swap).

You can create an extended partition (remove one of the primary partitions that you don't need) instead of one of the primary partitions and once you have extended partition, you can create as many logical partitions as you want. I have 10 or more logical partitions inside my extended partition. This is what I need at the moment.

As for the reserved partitions, it's for recovery purposes and that partition comes with laptops nowadays. It's there by default. I don't think it's large in size so I don't think it's good idea to get rid of it.

[Joshwaa]

I assume you have 4 Primary Partitions that's why you can't get more partitions.
Ubuntu needs minimum 2 partitions (root and swap).

You can create an extended partition (remove one of the primary partitions that you don't need) instead of one of the primary partitions and once you have extended partition, you can create as many logical partitions as you want. I have 10 or more logical partitions inside my extended partition. This is what I need at the moment.

As for the reserved partitions, it's for recovery purposes and that partition comes with laptops nowadays. It's there by default. I don't think it's large in size so I don't think it's good idea to get rid of it.

Thing is, I need the partitions I have. Ones for Windows 7, ones for the Backup and ones for the System Reserved, and I don't fancy removing any of them. My ubuntu partition is 30gb and I have a 4gb swap, it seems sufficient enough.

[amjjawad]

I was touch unwilling as well - but backed up home ( which if course I always do anyway ... ) and tried it out - all was there.

It did help my peace of mind to know that all my data is actually on other drives and just symlinked to the ubuntu home folders.

Yes sure, backup first then do whatever you want

Thanks!

[amjjawad]

Thing is, I need the partitions I have. Ones for Windows 7, ones for the Backup and ones for the System Reserved, and I don't fancy removing any of them. My ubuntu partition is 30gb and I have a 4gb swap, it seems sufficient enough.

In that case yes, you can keep it. I misunderstood your post and thought you don't have a swap partition.
But in general, it's always good to have an extended partition.

For backup, I use external HDDs.

[Joshwaa]

In that case yes, you can keep it. I misunderstood your post and thought you don't have a swap partition.
But in general, it's always good to have an extended partition.

For backup, I use external HDDs.

Yeah, well you see I'm a 15 year old kid strapped for cash at the minute as I need to earn about £350 to buy out my mobile phone contract:

Start opinion/rant
(Guys, never go for Virgin Mobile - they're scammers, also, never get the Nokia X6, it's terrible)
End opinion/rant

so I can't really afford any external HDs, I've been tempted to extend my Ubuntu partition but this would mean reformatting it.. which isn't too helpful since I've had to reinstall Ubuntu once already in the past few days due to GTK+ failure.. So yeah, I'll just stick to what I have, 30gb Ubuntu partition with a 4gb swap file since I have 4gb ram.

Edit: I don't have a swap partition, I have a swap file.

[amjjawad]

so I can't really afford any external HDs, I've been tempted to extend my Ubuntu partition but this would mean reformatting it.. which isn't too helpful since I've had to reinstall Ubuntu once already in the past few days due to GTK+ failure.. So yeah, I'll just stick to what I have, 30gb Ubuntu partition with a 4gb swap file since I have 4gb ram.

If you noticed my signature, I have 9 OS's installed so I can't really keep the backup partition in my internal HDD, that's why I use external ones but that's only me
In your case, I meant it's advisable to use external but of course you can't buy one now ... you might in the future which is very good idea

Edit: I don't have a swap partition, I have a swap file.

Yes, now it's very clear

[adipramono]

I have my 763 MB of SWAP and 2.7 GB of RAM. Sometimes I think I don't even need any SWAP for my laptop because the memory from RAM itself is already more than enough for my everyday task.