How large should I make root, home, and swap partitions?

Posted by starcorn on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by starcorn
Published on 2011-01-15T19:06:22Z Indexed on 2011/01/15 19:58 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 212

Filed under:

installation

|

partitioning

Hello, I have a laptop with win7 installed. I have now made a 60gb partition which I want to install ubuntu into. The question I have, before I do the installation, is how large each of the root, swap, and home partition should be? I have read some place that root could be as small as 8GB, but isn't that too small? Since I guess beside ubuntu all the softwares installed will reside there as well? And I think I'm going to set my swap to be 2GB large.

My main concern is how large should the root partition should be. I'm mainly going to use ubuntu for programming and browse the web.

© Ask Ubuntu or respective owner

Related posts about installation

Installation stuck on "Installation Type" screen

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I am trying to install Ubuntu 11.10 with Windows 7 from a CD. I am using an HP Pavilion dm4. I've never used Ubuntu (or any Linux) before. Everything goes alright until I get to the "Installation Type" screen. Instead of giving me options, it just has a blank menu, and all the buttons are disabled… >>> More
Visual Studio 2010 Installation Screenshots, links to installation Guides, Forum

as seen on Microsoft .NET Support Team - Search for 'Microsoft .NET Support Team'
Today Installed Visual Studio 2010 in my new Sony Vaio laptop. I’ve habit of taking screen shots while setups are running. It helps me if I want to find the items what I installed earlier for that software. but taking screen shots is not required for the software's like Visual Studio as it provides… >>> More
OpenIndiana installation hangs at 2% - Preparing disk for OpenIndiana installation

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I've been trying to install OpenIndiana on an HP DL320 G6 for a while now. I've got a 16GB HP SDHC card in the onboard slot and a SATA CD-Rom with oi-dev-151a-text-x86.iso burnt to a disc. Installation seems to progress fine until I get to the actual installation portion. The SD card is picked up… >>> More
local wordpress installation, plugin installation and file permissions

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I have a local wordpress installation and got everything working, until I tried to install a new plugin. Trying to activate the plugin, wordpress asked me for FTP connection information, which I understood to be a failure of write-access to the plugins directory. Apache runs as www-data, so I ran… >>> More
Messed up installation of mysql-server - cannot complete installation or deinstallation

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
apt-get got stuck while installing mysql-server. I don't know why but it just stopped working and never continued. I had to reboot the machine in the middle of the setup process. Now, if I try to install or purge the mysql-server package, apt-get tries to configure mysql-server first (tells me its… >>> More

Related posts about partitioning

Partitioning Webcast Details - 17/03/2010

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
Hi AllHere are the details for Wednesday's (17th March 2010) webcast on Partitioning:Webcast is at http://strtc.oracle.com (IE6, 7 & 8 supported only)Conference ID for the webcast is 6168728There is no conference keyPlease use your real name in the name field (just makes it easier for us to help… >>> More
UNR Installation: Partitioning Error

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hi all, I have a Samsung N120 netbook (with upgraded 2GB RAM). I'm trying to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but when I set my partitions, I get an error. The setup I want right now is: Recovery Partition - 6 GB Windows XP Home Partition - 40 GB General Partition - remaining space UNR Partition -… >>> More
Parallelism in .NET – Part 5, Partitioning of Work

as seen on Reed Copsey - Search for 'Reed Copsey'
When parallelizing any routine, we start by decomposing the problem. Once the problem is understood, we need to break our work into separate tasks, so each task can be run on a different processing element. This process is called partitioning. Partitioning our tasks is a challenging feat… >>> More
How do I mount a "DiskSecure Multiboot" partition?

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
For a hard drive that has 4 or 5 partitions, I was able to mount one of them using Ubuntu LiveCD: sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt but is there a way to mount to the other partitions? (if using sudo fdisk -l, it only shows /dev/sda) GParted's snapshot is: Right now, the fdisk info is as follows: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$… >>> More
Can't remove GPT data from MBR

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I am having difficulty getting the Ubuntu installer (and gparted) to recognize the partitions on my MBR type disk. Other operating systems and disk tools read the disk structure and the files on it fine. I have used fixparts to write a new MBR but the issue persists. I assume the issue stems from… >>> More