Dell XPS M1210 dual-boot WinXP / Ubuntu
This is the output of my df -Th:
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 ext3 20G 2.8G 16G 15% /
/dev/sda1 ext2 96M 8.4M 83M 10% /boot
/dev/sda3 ntfs 50G 7.9G 43G 16% /media/sda3
/dev/sda7 vfat 4.7G 312K 4.7G 1% /media/sda7
/dev/sda6 vfat 35G 142M 34G 1% /windows
I always prefer to install the Windows partition before the Linux one, because Windows will overwrite your MBR and call the Windows boot loader that doesn't detect any non-Windows OS present. Besides, the Linux one (GRUB) is superior, per its flexibility and customizability.
But before starting installing the OSes, one must partition. What I did was first to boot with my Ubuntu CD (6.10 Egdy Eft), and use gparted to partition my disks. Perhaps I could've done it otherwise, but I had time and still went through the whole installation (which took perhaps 10 minutes. sda1 to 4 are primary partitions, while the three others were logical ones (with swap memory somewhere in there).
Out of a total space of 120Gb, I chose to give Ubuntu only 20Gb, and Windows, 50Gb. The remaining space is of fat32 filesystem and used as storage space accessible in read and write by both OS (35Gb - sda6) and for built-in "media center" features. Before partitioning, on top of the main preinstalled Windows Media Center, there were two smaller partitions of 2 and 4Gb respectively. One was seemingly for Dell's Media Center implementation, and the other is some sort of backup WinXP.
After partitioning, I rebooted with the Windows Media Center CD that came with it.
So I installed Windows XP on the 50Gb partition, which is what it needs (what will be required by games, OS upgrades). I made sure to make My Documents point to the largest fat32 partition, so that my music, pictures collection in Windows is also available on Ubuntu.
Then, with my MBR rewritten by Windows, I rebooted using the Ubuntu CD again. I made an install on the 20Gb partition, which I think is more than enough for a Linux system. Workstations at work rarely use up more than 10Gb outside of /home. Had to install several times, but finally got it right. Will document it in the next post.
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