Well, I have been researching loads of information in regards to making the best out of dual boot. My goal: Dual boot Windows 7 + Ubuntu 12
Sure, you can let Ubuntu automatically configure the settings for you once you boot off the cd, but the problem with that is all the free space you have on your hard drive will be partitioned and allocated exclusively to Ubuntu. I have over 350G of free space that, if I let the Ubuntu installer work its magic, would would have been more wasted than 16 year old girl. Ubuntu only needs 4.5G.
So I had to fix that, which required me to make the partitions myself. In Windows I had to shrink the C:\ drive by 50G (the amount I was allocating to Ubuntu) and go into Ubuntu and format it likewise.
A simple partition only requires /, /home and swap (which is strictly for RAM), although I allocated my partitions accordingly:
Win7: (The remainder of my hard drive... 650G+)
/: 15G (Where all basic installation files are stored.)
/home: 18G (Where all personal information is stored, ALTHOUGH I implemented a nifty little trick by mounting /home to ext3, which basically means I can view all my saved data from Windows in this folder as well as Ubuntu... sweet!)
unallocated space: 10G (This is if I want to install beta releases of Ubuntu, or better yet, install ANOTHER operating system inside Ubuntu and have a triple-boot!)
/boot: 100MB (This was another awesome little trick few know about. In the newer versions of Ubuntu, it is unnecessary to use the /boot mount because on installation you can choose where you want the boot stored... which is usually on the C:\ drive. But I read about how you can mount /boot to ext3, give it 100MB its max ammount of space to execute, and then viola! You can boot right into Windows from Ubuntu instead of having to reboot the whole system to get into the boot menu.)
swap: 12G (Swap space is best configured at 1.5x max total RAM.)
And there she is. Running Ubuntu now with the option to swap to Windows at any time. Performance is great, and interface is outstanding.
Peace.
Sure, you can let Ubuntu automatically configure the settings for you once you boot off the cd, but the problem with that is all the free space you have on your hard drive will be partitioned and allocated exclusively to Ubuntu. I have over 350G of free space that, if I let the Ubuntu installer work its magic, would would have been more wasted than 16 year old girl. Ubuntu only needs 4.5G.
So I had to fix that, which required me to make the partitions myself. In Windows I had to shrink the C:\ drive by 50G (the amount I was allocating to Ubuntu) and go into Ubuntu and format it likewise.
A simple partition only requires /, /home and swap (which is strictly for RAM), although I allocated my partitions accordingly:
Win7: (The remainder of my hard drive... 650G+)
/: 15G (Where all basic installation files are stored.)
/home: 18G (Where all personal information is stored, ALTHOUGH I implemented a nifty little trick by mounting /home to ext3, which basically means I can view all my saved data from Windows in this folder as well as Ubuntu... sweet!)
unallocated space: 10G (This is if I want to install beta releases of Ubuntu, or better yet, install ANOTHER operating system inside Ubuntu and have a triple-boot!)
/boot: 100MB (This was another awesome little trick few know about. In the newer versions of Ubuntu, it is unnecessary to use the /boot mount because on installation you can choose where you want the boot stored... which is usually on the C:\ drive. But I read about how you can mount /boot to ext3, give it 100MB its max ammount of space to execute, and then viola! You can boot right into Windows from Ubuntu instead of having to reboot the whole system to get into the boot menu.)
swap: 12G (Swap space is best configured at 1.5x max total RAM.)
And there she is. Running Ubuntu now with the option to swap to Windows at any time. Performance is great, and interface is outstanding.
Peace.
