/home
is a separate partition for your personal data, in case you have to reinstall Ubuntu you won't lose it.
swap
is a partition which is somehow the equivalent of pagefile.sys
in Windows. It is used when you run out of RAM.
To install Ubuntu you need /
partition and /swap
. /home
is optional but recommended.
So, in Windows right click Computer
, then Manage
and select Disk management
. Delete or shrink the last partition and leave a minimum of 15 GB unallocated space (for a decent install).
After that boot from an Ubuntu DVD/USB and when greeted with the partitioning options select Something Else
. Click the Unallocated space
and press New
button. Select at the end
and use as swap
. Let it be as much or a little more than your RAM.
Now click again the unallocated space and press New
button and create an ext4
partition mounted as /
.
If you want /home
partition then leave some space from it and create it by choosing mount point /home
and ext4
type.