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I bought a notebook, Sony Vaio VPC-EB1M1E and I want to make partition and use both windows-7 and Linux(Ubuntu).

Should I make partition from inside windows, or should make partition using recovery discs?

There is windows-installer version of Ubuntu, should I use it, or should I install it separately?

Thanks.

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So. First of all, Wubi is about trying out Linux, not about totally using it (you will have some speed decrease, problems can occur, bla bla. I would NOT recommend using that "install it in Windows" at all).

About the partition. You can do it from the "Computer management" in Windows, or using Acronis Disk Director suite. (I don't really trust Ubuntu's manager since it ruined my partition table , so I just stick to Win/acronis).

That's all I guess. If you want a permanent installation, consider using the Manual method. (That means at the install of Ubuntu, select the manual partitioning. You need basically 3 partition for using it long term.

You need a / , a /home and a swap . Not sure how familiar you are with this. / Contains the system files, like applications and such (usually I create a 15gb partition for that, but many people is fine with 10gb..). /home will keep your personal files (music, Documents, YOUR SETTINGS!. Making a separate partition just for this will help you at the next reinstall. You can just 'assign' the partition as /home, and you dont have to format it. If you are lucky, even your settings will be back 1:1).

Swap is a partition without normal fs type, its just for swap. Like paging file in Windows, but here its a different partition (its needed for hibernation, when you run out of RAM. There is a saying that you need twice as much as you ram you have (so I have 2048mb ram, I would have to create a 4096 mb swap). But that's just a dumb saying. You are fine with at least as big as your ram partition (so about ~2100mb, ~4100, and so on. Bigger than your ram because if you hibernate, it have to save the running stuff.))

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Can I expect big differences between windows way and manual way? – metdos May 9 '10 at 17:15
Yeah of course. Mainly as I said its for trying it out for a while. Not for using it as a main OS. The best would be resizing your main partition (ntfs) into a smaller one and use linux. Or use WUBI (Windows way) to try it out. You decide. (Other problem like boot loader wont be able to boot it and such can occur with the Windows installation, at least I experienced these). – Shiki May 9 '10 at 17:18
From the Wubi page. "The performance is identical to a standard installation, except for hard-disk access which is slightly slower than an installation to a dedicated partition. If your hard disk is very fragmented the performance will degenerate." | "Hibernation is not supported under Wubi, moreover Wubi filesystem is more vulnerable to hard-reboots (turning off the power) and power outages than a normal filesystem, so try to avoid unplugging the power. An Ubuntu installation to a dedicated partition provides a filesystem that is more robust ..." .. wubi-installer.org/faq.php – Shiki May 9 '10 at 17:19
My mistake; I actually want to say partition way, is there big differences between partitioning with using windows tool, or doing it manually. – metdos May 9 '10 at 17:22
Either will shrink the Windows partition for you... personally, I would use the Windows tool for this. The Ubuntu installer will create its own partitions in the unallocated space on the disk - the Windows tool will not create "foreign" disk partitions. – Neal May 9 '10 at 17:54
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