What size partitions for install

[johnmalc]

I am currently downloading VL 5.8 std after completely failing to get PuppyLinux to install to the hard disk. The machine is an old laptop, PII 266Mhz, 160MB RAM and a 3.1GB HDD(mem and HDD easily upgradeable). I have noted that all the reviews make mention of the fact that the install leaves you to decide what partitions/size you want. To that, I have no idea as all the other distros I have used did it for me! At the moment the HDD is RAW and I don't want any other OS on there. I have to tools at my disposal to partition and format the drive, just no idea of sizes, so any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[lagagnon]

VL5.8 STD requires a minumum 2.1GB for install (root partition /). You should then have 2x RAM for the swap partition  (320MB), that leaves you not much of  a remainder (700MB) for home partition.

[Joe1962]

When short of space it's best just to make one install and one swap partition. I don't think more than 256 MB of swap is really necessary in normal use, but that's just a personal view.

[johnmalc]

Speedy replies!

I'll go with  recommendations re space shortage as this is just an experiment, but if I like the distro I have a 20GB drive I can throw at it plus another 128MB RAM from a dead iBook, plus I'll load it onto my new laptop.

Oh, is there any particular file system I have to use for each partition, ext2, ext3 etc, or is that automatic?

Thanks again

[tomh38]

I'm pretty sure from my last install that in VL 5.8 Standard you can choose between ext2, ext3, and ReiserFS.  I prefer ext3, but that's just personal, others prefer one of the others for various reasons (probably covered in another thread around here somewhere), though ext2 is non-journaling and this makes it more difficult to recover from errors.

[Joe1962]

This may just be subjective, but ext3 seemed to make a certain old laptop noticeably slower than reiserfs. Then again, laptops tend to have slower hard disks than desktops, so any difference would be more noticeable on them.

[GrannyGeek]

I'll go with  recommendations re space shortage as this is just an experiment, but if I like the distro I have a 20GB drive I can throw at it plus another 128MB RAM from a dead iBook, plus I'll load it onto my new laptop.

Oh, is there any particular file system I have to use for each partition, ext2, ext3 etc, or is that automatic?

I suggest you use one of the journalling file systems (ext3 or reiserfs). I nearly always go with reiserfs but not for any particular reason. I don't understand the technical details of why one might be better than another for a particular system. reiserfs has always been fine for me. Journalling file systems do a much better job of preventing file system damage, or recovering if damage has occurred, than non-journalling file systems. VL offers a new file system now (xfs?), but I know nothing about it and it has an experimental "feel" to me, so I haven't tried it out.

I never make a separate /home partition. As long as you can copy the contents of /home to other media if you're going to reinstall and don't want to lose settings and data in /home, I don't see any advantages to having /home on its own partition.
--GrannyGeek

[johnmalc]

Oay, so I'm going with 2 partitions and  reiserfs file system. Burning the .iso now.

Good support is as important as the distro, so you lot have given it a headstart!

I'll report back how it went, thanks again.