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Need recommendations for partition size


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My sister would like Mandriva Linux installed on her laptop. She will be using it only to send/receive e-mails and to browse the web. Any word processing, etc. will be done via XP and Microsoft Office. She has a 120GB hard drive. How many GBs should I dedicate to Mandriva's partition? She has close to 8GB of e-mails she'd like to keep, I'd like to add to that capacity to account for space reserved for future e-mails.

 

I would appreciate recommendations before I proceed with the install.

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/swap 2 x RAM size

 

This old rule of a thumb (and which everyone was following for sure) is plain wrong nowadays.

Con Kolivas assures that 256M of swap is more than enough on most modern *desktop* machines with 512M or more RAM, while things change if one uses things like the CK swap prefetch kernel patch. Servers need a bit more swap, but still less than the above suggestion.

kerneltrap.org is full with discussions about this issue, and the general consensus is that 2X swap is way too much even for very early 2.6.X revisions. It was *really* necessary only on the 2.4.X branch.

Edited by scarecrow
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Surely with 8Gbs of emails she would be better off copying them to two DVD-RWs if they are that important.

Keeping them on a laptop cannot really be a good idea. Lose the laptop and its all gone together with all her private communications then open to the world.

 

I have 1GB of memory and my swap partition is only 512Mb and has been for about 3 years and have never had a problem.

 

Cheers. John.

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If you are going to suspend or hibernate, you will need 2 x RAM. If you aren't, then you can reduce it. So, whilst some people think it's not relevant, it can be depending on your requirements.

 

Try suspending/hibernating with 512MB of swap, or no swap if you have 512MB or more of memory. Ain't gonna happen. If swap space isn't being used, then you're lucky and it'll suspend.

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If you are going to suspend or hibernate, you will need 2 x RAM. If you aren't, then you can reduce it. So, whilst some people think it's not relevant, it can be depending on your requirements.

 

Try suspending/hibernating with 512MB of swap, or no swap if you have 512MB or more of memory. Ain't gonna happen. If swap space isn't being used, then you're lucky and it'll suspend.

 

Hibernate only needs equal space, not double, and usually you can get away with less. Who runs theirs sytem with 100% ram usage?

 

The double is an old rule that's irrelevant nowadays.

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