Computer Help and Support

A new installation is going to be quick and easy.

Choose to manually create your own hard drive partitions as follows.

1 A "root" (/) partition of approx. 50 to 100 gbs if you have the room. /
2. A "swap" partition of 8 to 16 gbs if you have the room. swap
3. Devote the rest of the drive to a "/home" partition. /home

If for whatever reason you ever have to reinstall the system do the same as above but choose to NOT format the /home partition. All of your personal data is stored in the /home partition and by not formatting it you will preserve that data. If you do have to reinstall use the same username and password you originally used in the first install and you'll find all your data and basic settings will be there untouched in the second install thus saving you tons of time by not having to recreate it all. Then simply reinstall the applications you prefer and you'll be right back running as before. A typical Linux distribution install is far faster than installing any version of Windows.

A /home partition in Linux is somewhat equivalent to the C:Users directory in Windows.