I manually set-up a partition during my installation of Ubuntu 9.10. I only created a swap partition about 512mb and a root partition of 10gb and no partition for /home but I have a partition for all my data files. What I really want is a separate partition for programs and data.Is this partitioning ok? By default in which directory packages are installed and how much disc space is consumed during the installation (no updates yet)?

What do you mean you have "no partition for /home but I have a partition for all my data files"? /home is where your data files go. It's the only place your personal data files go.

swap: Looks fine. If you have plenty of ram you'll never use it.

/: The base install is only several of gigs so 10 gigs is fine. Whether 10 gigs is big enough for you depends on how much additional software you plan on installing and how you plan on using the machine. But I think you'll be ok.

If you want to separate your data and software have 3 partitions:
/
/home (for data)
swap

what i meant is the data files is on another hardrive...
my partition table is:
/dev/sda3 -this is my C: drive
/dev/sda4 - this is my / partition
/dev/sda5 - my D: drive
/dev/sda6 - my swap partition

my data is in in sda5.
Thanks for the reply mate!

what i meant is the data files is on another hardrive...
my partition table is:
/dev/sda3 -this is my C: drive
/dev/sda4 - this is my / partition
/dev/sda5 - my D: drive
/dev/sda6 - my swap partition

my data is in in sda5.
Thanks for the reply mate!

your only showing sda# so this indicates only one drive with many partitions..

I manually set-up a partition during my installation of Ubuntu 9.10. I only created a swap partition about 512mb and a root partition of 10gb and no partition for /home but I have a partition for all my data files. What I really want is a separate partition for programs and data.Is this partitioning ok? By default in which directory packages are installed and how much disc space is consumed during the installation (no updates yet)?

Having a / ,/home and swap can be good but for most desktop users it's over kill to worry about it too much. Swap is normally 1.5 -2 x ram. Not a big deal though if you need to add swap latter you can create a swap file. Most aps you install will go in /usr 10gb should be way over kill 5GB should be close to right. It really will depend on how much stuff you want to install.

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