Installing Ubuntu On Laptop With 8Gb Ssd And Hard Disk

[thaimite]

I have just purchased a Samsung Series 7 laptop (NP700Z5C-S01) which has an 8GB SSD as well as a 750GB hard disk

How would you guys reckon I get the best use out of this small SSD.

In my current system I have seperate partitions for Boot, Root, Home and Swap.

My initial thought was to put the /Root partition on the SSD but in my current set-up it uses 10GB (I allowed for 20).

I have seen suggestions to use an SSD for the Swap partition but this makes no sense to me as with 8GB or RAM, it should not get too much use and SSD I understand is slow to write/erase.

Perhaps I should move the /etc from the Root partition to the hard drive?.

NOTE the SSD is a separate drive and not part of the drive cache. Maybe I would be better buying a larger SSD (40-60GB) and replacing it, but such items are not easy found here in Jordan.

I look forward to your suggestions and thoughts

Edited December 15, 2012 by thaimite

[urandom]

I have seen suggestions to use an SSD for the Swap partition but this makes no sense to me as with 8GB or RAM

it doesn't really make sense as you said and it's also bad for the SSD as you may want to minimize the number of writes to preserve your SSD's lifespan.

Perhaps I should move the /etc from the Root partition to the hard drive?

/etc will most likely not help, config files are very light. it depends on your distro but i guess /var would be a much better candidate for two reasons: 1/ logs can grow significantly and 2/ it's very likely that your packages are cached in there and that can be GB easily.

edit/ you may want to put /opt on the platter drive as well, depends on packagers but large stuff like games is often put in there

edit2/ ncdu [ http://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu ] may help to quickly visualize what's taking space

Edited December 15, 2012 by urandom

[thaimite]

I have seen suggestions to use an SSD for the Swap partition but this makes no sense to me as with 8GB or RAM

it doesn't really make sense as you said and it's also bad for the SSD as you may want to minimize the number of writes to preserve your SSD's lifespan.

Perhaps I should move the /etc from the Root partition to the hard drive?

/etc will most likely not help, config files are very light. it depends on your distro but i guess /var would be a much better candidate for two reasons: 1/ logs can grow significantly and 2/ it's very likely that your packages are cached in there and that can be GB easily.

edit/ you may want to put /opt on the platter drive as well, depends on packagers but large stuff like games is often put in there

edit2/ ncdu [ http://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu ] may help to quickly visualize what's taking space

Thanks

That is exactly the type of guidance I am looking for,

As I am still learning my way round Ubuntu after too long with M$ (DOS2 onwards) which of your suggestions (/var or /opt) would have least impact being on the normal HDD.

I am leaning toward your initial suggestion of moving the /var as I have had problems in the past with both logs, and the Admin trash filling up my /root partition

Unfortunately I am at work at the moment so cannot check the usage of these folders

[aarn]

You might be able to get further guidance trawling through www.LinuxbsDos.com.

I think that there was a recent entry concerning something similar to your situation ie

dual boot with a newer machine. I found I had to get into the UEFI BIOS (usually F2 key)

and tinker with the boot options a few times.

Windoze is too big (dare I say 'bloated') to put on your 8Gb ssd, so that is the home for Ubuntu

With 8Gb ram, all the advice is, no need to create a swap partition when installing Ub.

Another thing I do, running Ub (actually zorin 6 lite, 32bit) on an older machine with a 60Gb ssd,

is to direct all downloads into a usb stick. I figure that it causes less wear on the system when deleting

downloads, podcasts etc. Of course updates etc. affecting Ub are mandatory.

Plenty of Ub/linux distributions to chose from (check www.distrowatch.com). On my main machine (8Gb RAM 120Gb sandisk ssd)

I use Lubuntu 12.04. Boot-up time ~ 10 seconds, a pearler!

Trawling through the forums, it seems to better for ssd longevity to just do a complete shutdown,

rather than suspend/hibernate, between sessions, when using Ub.

On the other hand, assuming you have a win7 system on your 750Gb HD, seems to be handy to

put it into sleep mode, rather than shutdown, at the end of your session.

Hope this helps, I am always willing to be corrected, good luck AA

[thaimite]

You might be able to get further guidance trawling through www.LinuxbsDos.com.

I think that there was a recent entry concerning something similar to your situation ie

dual boot with a newer machine. I found I had to get into the UEFI BIOS (usually F2 key)

and tinker with the boot options a few times.

Windoze is too big (dare I say 'bloated') to put on your 8Gb ssd, so that is the home for Ubuntu

With 8Gb ram, all the advice is, no need to create a swap partition when installing Ub.

Another thing I do, running Ub (actually zorin 6 lite, 32bit) on an older machine with a 60Gb ssd,

is to direct all downloads into a usb stick. I figure that it causes less wear on the system when deleting

downloads, podcasts etc. Of course updates etc. affecting Ub are mandatory.

Plenty of Ub/linux distributions to chose from (check www.distrowatch.com). On my main machine (8Gb RAM 120Gb sandisk ssd)

I use Lubuntu 12.04. Boot-up time ~ 10 seconds, a pearler!

Trawling through the forums, it seems to better for ssd longevity to just do a complete shutdown,

rather than suspend/hibernate, between sessions, when using Ub.

On the other hand, assuming you have a win7 system on your 750Gb HD, seems to be handy to

put it into sleep mode, rather than shutdown, at the end of your session.

Hope this helps, I am always willing to be corrected, good luck AA

Thanks again for the helpful response.

With regard to the swap file this is used by Ubuntu when hibernating and thus should be equal to the size of the RAM or greater else hibernate may fail. I think there is a workaround, but for the sake of 8GB on my drive do not want the hassle of trying it.

I will not use Windoze on the SSD at all. I am not even sure why I am leaving the M$ bloatware on the disk. On my current installation (Vaio) I only have single boot, and use Windows for about an hour a month inside a VMWare machine. The only tasks that I have not been able to perform are related to Sony firmware upgrade (requires native Widows) and some programs with USB communications (Kies and Android Phone for example).

I currently use Ubuntu 12.10 and am very happy with it, and will even admit I like Unity

I have read the forums about setting up Windows for 'fast Boot' on in the BIOS of my new machine which will use the SSD transparently as a cache, and also invoke UEFI. I hope to stay away from that trap. I have even read of people managing to 'brick' their new Samsung when installing Ubuntu after inadvertently activating this using this feature prior to the install