[DecK]

Hi all
I'm getting really tired of windows and am thinking about making the jump to linux.
My intent is to use Ubuntu 9.04 with XBMC, LIRC an MythTV.
I don't fair bit of reasearch to this point and think I am about ready to start, but I have two open questions. Hopefully you can provide some advice.

1/ My proc and MB support 64bit, but I've seen some on this forum having issue in the past with 64bit distros. Is the current recommendation to stick with 32bit?


2/ Partition schema
I will be using a 1TB drive and was thinking about 3 partitions, all ext3:

• 10GB for OS and apps
  
• 4GB Swap (to match 4GB RAM)
  
• Rest as storage for MythTV recordings.
  

Is this approach OK or should I consider something different?


Thanks in advance
Declan

[sgeoxd]

At least initially I would stick with 32 bit. Once you are more familiar with Linux and you do another install, 64 bit may be worth the extra tinkering then. It will at least come easier with some experience.

You may look into installing your partitions as LVM so you can easily re-size them later or add extra drives (while keeping the same partitions).

I am running on 1GB of RAM and still have 24MB available (with a swapiness setting of 10). If you have more RAM you won't likely use much swap at all. Let alone 4 GB. Others may have differing opinions on this or anything else. But 2GB should be ok.

ext4 is stable enough for general home use. There is a pretty decent performance gains over ext3. You'll boot a few seconds faster. Should help with any hard disk intensive uses too.

[JumJum]

Its been quite a long time since 64-bit required any extra tinkering.

I'd also definitely go for ext4 instead of ext3.

With 4GB of RAM I personally wouldn't set up a swap partition at all, but add a swap file later. The only reason to use a partition would be for hibernation.