partition file type choces

pikeman

I am putting Ubuntu on a Windows machine with the intention of having a dual-boot machine. I set a 20MB partition aside on my drive for Linux and in the process of installation it wanted to know what file format to use. There were about six choices.

So rather than choose the wrong one I bailed.

I have looked for an explanation about these choices without finding one. (The install process did not prompt the choice of one over another.)

Could someone link me to one?

It also seems that I need an additional swap partition - is 60MB adequate? And I assume it must be the same file format as the OS partition.

Thanks!

mfillpot

The best available filesystem type for a home or standard business machine will be ext4.

As for the swap, 60MB may be too little. It is generally recommended to set it to 2X your RAM quantity or 2G whichever is lower. RAM is like a paging file in windows and is used as backup memory that is used when your RAM has been filled.

saqman2060

You can use either ext3 or ext4. Ext4 is what I normally use and has a slight advantage over ext3. As for swap, set it to 2GB, this works better, in case system memory is used up, you have than enough page-file space for backup purposes. You have to set a filesystem type for the swap, your linux distro will do that for you.