Things to do before and after installing Ubuntu

After almost running out of space allocated for Ubuntu and somewhat messing my machine (started to crash a lot) just because I'm not a good maintainer, i decided to change the partition structure for the new install.

Deciding on how much space you need

This is a crucial step in installation. You should try and allocate enough space for the Linux distribution you are installing to avoid the pains of resizing the partitions. Sometime people even reinstall the whole distribution instead of resizing the partitions.

In my previous install i had allocated 40GB for the Linux partition. Installing software and a couple of virtual machines i was on the verge of running out of space. Also since i was to re-install so i decided to given even more space.

 

How my partitions are laid out

Also i decided to make a separate home partition, so that i don't loose my data if i need to reinstall or shift to a different distribution.

So i decided to make 3 separate partitions:

1. About 40GB partition for root, where all the software installations will reside.
2. About 60GB partition for home, so that my data resides in a separate partition.
3. Since i have 6GB RAM , so about 5GB of swap space.

This is how my partitions are laid out on the disk.

Installation Process

The installation process is very easy for Ubuntu and now a days almost every distribution has made their installation process easier than before. So no problems here once your know how to layout your partitions.

After Installation

Surprisingly this time out of the box i could manipulate brightness settings otherwise you'll need to fix that too.
There are a few things you might want to do after you install Ubuntu. Here is a list of what i did.

1. After installation adjust basic settings according to your need. Go to settings and make changes to power management, display, launcher settings etc.
2. Enable Mutiverse.
   
3. There are some 3rd party codecs or plugins required for essential softwares to work. Install "ubuntu-restricted-extras", this should take of almost everything you'll need from flash to codecs for audio and video files. But be warned that it might not be legal in some countries, because of software patents.
4. When ever you install a package or remove a packages, remember there may be packages that are no longer needed (mostly installed along as dependencies). Make sure to remove those too.

Hopefully this time i will try hard not to screw my installation.