I installed Ubuntu 64bit on a new Dell XPS 8500.
As I had no idea how to partition my disk, I installed everything in one partition.
The disk has 2TB and there is an additional 64GB SSD inside, which Ubuntu does not use as far as I can see.
How can I improve my installation? How shall I partition the disk? How can I use the SSD?
As I boot with UEFI, shall I put the EFI-partition on the SSD?
The best way to partition for Ubuntu AFAIK:
basically 3 partitions.
/root for operating System(Ubuntu)
/home for your files
Twice the amount of ram for swap
If you're stll getting setup. I'd suggest the easiest way is to start over, and do a manual installation / partition setup when asked for where to install.
In short, I'd suggest adding at least one partition on each disk... the simplest in this scenario would be one partition (likely ext4) on your SSD mounted as "root". Another partition (likely also ext4), on your large disk mounted as "home."
Depending on the amount of memory you have, you may or may not want to setup a third partition as a swap partition. In newer versions of linux kernel, swap can be a file; as such you don't need a partition -- and after install -- you can then experiment with adding a swap file to either root, or home partition. If you have a lot of RAM, I'd also suggest modifying 'swapiness' for your system to be lower than default install.
As far as performance, it might even make sense to have your "home" partition also be on your SSD. and then have your Documents, Pictures, Media, etc. folders mounted on your larger drive. This is more complex setup, but the config files stored in ~/.local ~/.mozilla ~/.config -- etc -- will benefit by being on an SSD when loading programs.
Lots of choices. And nothing that can't be changed in the future if you're unsure... in which case, start easy.
How can I improve my installation?
My method is to keep the partitions small and separated based on content.
/ 15 Gb/home/ 15 Gb./personal/ the remainder.When I re-install Ubuntu I format 1 and 2 and have a clean install. If I need to keep my personal settings I only format 1. The personal disc I can use in several other operating systems and also includes my MySQL database files. I symlink my home folders to this disc. I have 3 users on my system all pointing to /personal/.
If you want to incorparate the SSD into it I would put root (/) on that disc and the other partition on the HDD. This makes for a very fast boot. Trim the SSD and put tmp in its own filessystem. More tips relating to SSD here.
Can you be more clear about your problem, As far as I could understand, one of your problems is default boot entry in the boot menu. You can change it by editing grub. But as the same time I see it unrelated to the partitioning of you disk.
You can also change the grub default boot entry from the command line without having to install any additional tool. This won't change the order in the list but it will allow a different OS to boot by default, which sounds like what you may want anyway.
First, make a backup copy of /etc/default/grub. In case something goes wrong, you can easily revert to the known-good copy.
sudo cp /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.bak
Then edit the file using vim or the text editor of your choice.
sudo vim /etc/default/grub
Find the line that contains GRUB_DEFAULT=0 and set it to GRUB_DEFAULT=x where x is the index of grub menu item to which you would like to boot to by default. Note that the menu items are zero-indexed. That means that the first item in the list is 0 and that the sixth item is actually 5. So to boot to the sixth item in the list, the line would read GRUB_DEFAULT=5.
Additionally, if you want to use a kernel in the "Previous Linux Versions" menu, you'll want to change GRUB_DEFAULT=0 to GRUB_DEFAULT="2>x" (make sure to include the quotations), where x is the placement of the old kernel on the sub-list (assuming the "Previous Linux Versions" is third on the main list). Remember that the list always begins counting at 0.
Then build the updated grub menu.
sudo update-grub
