Linux or Vista first?

[bwanaaa]

I want to partition my hard drive and install the following
1)swap partition
2)Ubuntu 7.1
2)Vista

I would like either OS to use the swap partition for the swap file. Can this be done? How? Which should I install first-linux or windows?

Thank you.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: bwanaaa
I want to partition my hard drive and install the following
1)swap partition
2)Ubuntu 7.1
2)Vista

I would like either OS to use the swap partition for the swap file. Can this be done? How? Which should I install first-linux or windows?

Thank you.

You're much better off just using the ubunutu swap partition for just ubuntu, and leaving the swap file for windows in the OS partition. Putting the swap file in a separate partition is generally a bad idea performance wise in Windows (Xp or Vista). It sounds like a good thing to keep it separate to prevent fragmentation, but its not, trust me. You actually want it to be fragmented, for performance reasons. Yes, really.

Putting it on a separate drive = good.
Putting it on a separate partition on the same drive = bad.

With linux, the swapfile is used in a different way, so its a bit of a different story. IIRC, the linux swap partition isnt even recognized in windows due to the filesystem used, so you wont even see an extra drive letter, if thats your issue.

Dunno which to install first though, I'm not sure it even matters?

 

[Nothinman]

It is possible to share swap between OSes but it's really not worth the hassle since disk space is so cheap these days.

With linux, the swapfile is used in a different way, so its a bit of a different story. IIRC, the linux swap partition isnt even recognized in windows due to the filesystem used, so you wont even see an extra drive letter, if thats your issue.

There is no filesystem used for Linux swap, there's a small signature written so that it knows that it's usable but other than that it's just raw memory pages. You can give any partition a drive letter in Windows if you want but when you click on it Windows will just ask you to format it.

 

[sonoma1993]

Originally posted by: bwanaaa
I want to partition my hard drive and install the following
1)swap partition
2)Ubuntu 7.1
2)Vista

I would like either OS to use the swap partition for the swap file. Can this be done? How? Which should I install first-linux or windows?

Thank you.

install windows first, then install linux

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: sonoma1993
install windows first, then install linux

And the reasoning, in case the op was wondering, is that linux installers will generally do a fairly good job of finding windows installations and setting up a boot loader that will give you the choice of which to boot. Windows installers, otoh, generally don't pay attention to installations of other operating systems and will leave you needing a boot disk to get into the linux installation. (never tried this with vista, but that was certainly the case with xp)