[ltp] Setting up dual-boot on my R31 (and other desktops, too)

[Richard Neill]

James Knott wrote:
> thinkpadr31@lkv.mailshell.com wrote:
> 
>>I'm thinking of setting up my Thinkpad R31 with Windows and Linux.   I
>>have 1 GB of RAM.   I'll likely set up Linux first and then Windows at
>>a later date.   I'm leaning towards Ubuntu but curious about Gentoo.
>>

Gentoo has its advantages: note though that it is time-consuming, and 
requires a degree of expertise. Also, it needs a lot of disk space for 
the source code.

Do install Windows first. Linux is much better at dealing with Windows 
than the other way around.

>>I'm not sure if I have to use the ext2 file system.  Any other
>>situations where I can't or shouldn't use a journaling file system
>>like ext3, reiserfs, or xfs?

Reiserfs has worked very well for me. I don't recommend ext2 though, it 
means that every 10th boot, it can take half an hour to fsck!

>>
>>If I implemented this setup on a *desktop*, will I get better
>>performance if I put my swap partition on a second physical drive?
>>The primary will have one Linux and one Windows (NTFS) partition.
>>I'm thinking of putting a bunch of older 3-8 GB 3.5" drives to use.

Yes, you would - but only if the drive performance is as good. Swap on a 
second drive will be worse than everything on one drive, iff the second 
drive is slower. Either way, I think it would be marginal.

If you can spare the space, I recommend > 2GB of swap. Mozilla and 
firefox both have a nasty tendency to eat RAM, and consume 2GB each if 
used for a week without closing them!

Encrypted swap is also worthwhile - and very easy.

Swap isn't really used for performance; it's used so that, when you are 
short on memory, the machine doesn't crash.


HTH,

richard