Installing ubuntu on free space

[Granddragon]

I'm in the process of installing Ubuntu 8.10 on a laptop with vista already installed. i have about 30gb of unallocated space. When i select 'Guided - use the largest continuous free space' The after picture says Ubuntu 100%.
Shouldn't it say Ubuntu 19%. Or is this just going to erase my entire drive to make room for Ubuntu?

Thanks for any help guys.

[inobe]

you made a good move not proceeding .......


you should check out this first before going on

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/installation-guide/i386/preparing.html

edit: i got the information from this page, if you scroll down' it will explain how to use the installer as well

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/installation-guide/i386/index.html

[donkyhotay]

Is this unallocated space unformatted/unpartitioned, or just unused? If it's one of the first two then you'll want to partition manually, if it's just unused by your windows system then you may want to look at installing with wubi.
http://www.howtoforge.com/wubi_ubuntu_on_windows

[Granddragon]

I'm just a little confused about this. Why would installing to free space consume the entire drive?

Edit: its actually free space.
Edit Again: Also, I have 3 primary partitions already, how would i go about installing to free space if i need to make more then one partition?

[Granddragon]

Another question, for some reason my laptops sda1 is 41mb fat16. How can i check whats on it, and if its safe to remove?

[inobe]

when ever i was in a bind during my newb days i watched youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDTavLd2GM0

honestly, these youtube tutorials are a life saver, they eliminate a lot of reading.......

basically it was easier to see it happen, now of course' i can do it easily and for some reason reading has also become important, linux will do that, it opens a whole new world of learning, at first' i agree that we need a helping hand.

good luck

[pancham]

Thanks for the help..

[inobe]

your welcome, take advantage of youtube, the wealth of information, it's impossible not to understand video in our face :)