Getting Started With Ubuntu- Setting Up

After having played around with Ubuntu in VM’s and brother’s laptop, I’m ready to use it on my lappy too, though not as the only OS. So that means I’ll be dual booting between Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.10.

Now I had to decide whether to use Wubi or create another partition for Ubuntu. I chose the latter one.

My hdd has 640GB total storage. Current state of hdd is – 4 partitions

1.       Dell Utilities

2.       System Restore

3.       Windows 7

4.       Media

Structure that I needed:

1.       Dell utilities

2.       System Restore

3.       Windows 7

4.       Ubuntu

5.       Media

Problem 1: An HDD can only have 4 primary partitions. To create more than 4 partitions one primary partition has to be an extended partition which can then house logical drives.

Problem 2: Windows 7 partition had 300GB space allocated with only about 50GB being used. I needed to shrink it in order to create more space in my Media partition.

So how to get past these hurdles? I could go for a fresh install of windows and in the process of installing windows create the new partition system. Well, this is what I would have done had I not used Ubuntu before in VM's and not known about GParted. GParted is a superb application for exactly what I needed to do. I was able to shrink the Windows partition pretty easily but I couldn't get it to expand the Extended partition that housed Media. Bummer. Since I had already backed up every single file from my Media partition, I went ahead and deleted the partition. From the unallocated space now created plus the part created from shrinking windows, I created partition for Ubuntu and Media under one Extended Partition. Now I have exactly the setup that I needed.

I installed Ubuntu 11.10 – Oneiric Ocelot. First thing that I noted was the superfast boot up. Updates on experience using Ubuntu in some other post.