So there's a 16GB RAM laptop with Windows 10 pre-installed and I'd like to dual boot it with Ubuntu.
As I've google a bit, some recommend shrinking the main partition in Windows and
install Ubuntu on the free space. I do not use Windows often for now, but would like to
leave it for some time as a type of reserve. My main concerns are the following:
1) Are there any drawbacks/potential risks for Ubuntu in such dual boot configuration?
(like whether any potential defects in Windows file system may affect the booting
capacity of Ubuntu etc)
I used a Win8/Ubuntu dual boot previously on 4GB RAM and apparently Ubuntu run rather
smoothly. But as the main SSD comes pre-partitioned by Windows and after shrinking the
main partition to get free space for Ubuntu, Windows partitions can still be distributed
unevenly throughout the physical SSD space: ~like some partitions in the beginning,
another partition in the end of SSD, while the free space for Ubuntu is only in the middle
of the SSD space.
2) While shrinking the main SSD in Windows, some users allocate a rounded number of GB
for Ubuntu (like e.g. 150000 MB or 150GB). Can it be more optimal to enter a byte-oriented
number of MB (like - the multiples of 256 or 1024 etc) to include whole bytes?
I am planning to allocate ~750GB for Ubuntu and 250Gb for Windows, but tuning the partitoms
manually the number of megabytes may be required to enter.
3) Some tutorials recommend using Startup Disk Creator or its analog in Ubuntu Mate -
Mate Disk Image Mounter to create a bootable USB with Ubuntu. I used a bootable
USB with Ubuntu created by this tutorial "Make a bootable USB drive on any Linux distro [1],
using dd, wipefs, cfdisk, mkfs CLI utilities.
Is it more optimal to create a bootable USB with Ubuntu via CLI tools or GUI tools ?
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpGgTTFKwiU
4) Some tutorials on dual boot recommend using "Normal install" option while installing
Ubuntu in dual boot (which performs partitioning etc automatically), others - recommend
"Something else" option where you choose partition attributes for Ubuntu manually.
It seems I used the "Normal install" option last time and "Something else" option for Ubuntu
16 didn't work. What option is more optimal for Ubuntu - "Normal install" or "Something else"?
5) If after some time of using the Win10/Ubuntu dual boot I may want to remove Windows, or
shrink the Windows or Ubuntu partitions to reallocate free space, can I do this without reinstalling Ubuntu?