How much space for Ubuntu?

[jim89]

Hi all,

Quick question from me.

Background: I started a dual boot Windows 7/Ubuntu system at the start of this year. Along the way I screwed up the Windows installation and so was using just ubuntu for a couple of months. I now want to go back in to Windows for some gaming I can't make work in Ubuntu so I'm about to trash the entire hard drive and remake my set up.

Question: My SSD is 120GB. Roughly how much space should I provision on it for Ubuntu 12.04, considering that all I will be using it for is day-to-day internet browsing, v light gaming (1 or 2 small indies at max) - Windows will be my main gaming distro), watching films/streaming them to the TV (all of which are stored on 2TB storage HDD) and listening to music (again, all stored on the storage HDD). I'm thinking maybe 20-30GB, to give me a little bit of flexiblity. That way I can use the rest of the space for Windows and 1-2 larger, "proper" games.

Any thoughts are more than welcome.

Jim.

[grahammechanical]

I installed the very latest Ubuntu image a couple of weeks ago and it wanted less than 6GB. So, there you go. 20-30GB is plenty.

Regards.

[Bucky Ball]

Thread moved to Installation & Upgrades.

20Gb is plenty, depending what you want to do with /home. If that is inside / as a directory and you're wanting to store and record vid in there, you will need plenty, as sure you're aware.

I'm presuming you are using the Ubuntu install for only the things you say and storing any hefty data on a different partition(s)? Then 20Gb is ample. Bit off-topic, but you might want to try one of the specific media server flavours; Xbmc is good but not sure how you'd go gaming. Good luck.

* And as grahammechanical indicates, you could go lower. I never use more than 15Gb myself but don't store personal data in /. On a minimal install I did the other day at the moment and that takes up 4.5Gb, most of that probably Libreoffice! Another option; minimal install and only install what you need, Firefox, Thunderbird, restricted-extras probably and some other bits.

[jim89]

Thanks for moving this post- should have looked more closely at all the sub-forums. If I went with a more media-server specific flavour, what sort of things might I miss out on from "normal" Ubuntu? Or is it just that extra features are already installed?

[Lars Noodén]

The only difference is in the choice of pre-installed packages. Anything missing from one or the other can be easily added from the Software Center or Synaptic.

[Bucky Ball]

Try here:

http://xbmc.org/

And here:

http://www.mythbuntu.org/

Have a dig. There are others out there. You might find something that suits your purpose. I am using a Raspberry Pi to stream everything to the TV monitor at the moment. Got it about a month ago, it's great! (And cheap.) If you have a monitor with HDMI input you're away.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/quick-start-guide

[HaOsLsE]

If you haven't tried...xbmc is by far the best and nicest looking interface I've used to date. It also plays video and sound perfectly. I only have a 5.1 setup (7.1 but no extra speakers). It plays and sounds fantastic. The menu's and sorting of xbmc have made me a huge fan of it. I doubt you wouldn't like it.

[ushpiy]

Yeah I agree 20-30 GB is more than enough for what you want to do.