Aligning partitions on a new SSD (dualboot)

Question

I've been reading up on SSDs under both Windows and Linux. While Windows seems to do most of the aligning automatically and frankly all this information found online baffles me, I thought about installing a windows first and then setting up the partitions using their disk management tool.

Will this work? How would I have to set up the partitions for me to be able to install linux on it?

Here's what I thought.

1. Install Windows
2. Partition the SSD*
3. use a Linux live CD to change the file system of the partitions to ext4 or whatever I'll be using
4. Install Linux using the created partitions
5. Hopefully enjoy my new SSD

Now, how many partitions would I have to create for Linux and what file system would they have to be?

If it's ext4, I'll turn of journaling manually.

Answer 1

I myself done following instructions nicely without any problem:

1. After installing Windows, download GParted iso from gparted.sourceforge and write it to CD.
2. Boot from the CD; you'll see an amazing tool to work with partitions. Resize your Windows partition to your desired size if required. delete all un-used partitions.
3. Now, create a new partition (at-least 10GB) with ext{3,4} file-system.
4. Then created a new partition (with size your ram * 2) with swap file-system.
5. Reboot and continue with your desired Linux installation from CD.
6. Linux will recognize your Windows installation and adds it to boot menu

These steps are enough for who is new to Linux, in my idea.