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Just one question of detail (I'm still on the learning curve...). I think I understand the advice on not creating both a root and a home partition as well as a swap one on a USB stick, partly because of space-constraints. But that aside, what is the reasoning for having a root and a home separately? Is that equivalent to having a "system" partition (for the OS) and a "data" partition (for your files/documents) in Windows-speak - or is it more complicated than that?
Maybe it's subjective, but I think the responses are quicker from the USB flash drive than from the CD/DVD drive spinning up and down.
I'm still trying out my shortlist of Linux OS distros. Linux Lite heads the list because it's fairly "light", so good for slightly older laptops like mine. The other one I have been trying out is Zorin. But I found that neither worked on my older (Dell Inspiron 8600) laptop whose CPU does not have "pae". So the third one on test is LXLE (a Lubuntu variant) which works without needing "pae".
I have only just discovered, for example, that it is possible to run some Linux OSs from a USB stick (=pendrive/thumbdrive), and that this supposedly runs almost as quick as installing it as a dual boot on the C drive, and certainly a lot quicker than a LiveCD session from a CD. As I have two laptops, this has a certain appeal - and also means I don't have to rush into partitioning, installing and dual booting on either machine's hard drive. So I may go down the USB road first. On that subject, I read your note in this thread https://www.linuxliteos.com/forums/index.php?topic=210.0. So I may want to check back on that one specific point you mention about taking care over where exactly to put the bootloader of the Linux OS that is on the USB stick.
But (there seems always to be a but...) I have looked at the disk partitions on the laptop. It seems already to have four partitions: a 118MB FAT "EISA" (which I believe has something to do with Dell's Recovery/Restore); the C drive of 227GB NTFS which is the system partition and is doubtless where Windows XP resides along with all my files; then an "Extended Partition" of 2.50GB FAT32 which has no drive letter but is labelled Media Direct and logical drive; and finally another 3.00GB FAT32 partition labelled "unknown".
MediaDirect enables you to watch DVD movies, slideshows, or listen to music without having to boot the complete XP operating system.
This button apparently messes with, or bypasses, the Master Boot Record.
The good news is that if you are really VERY clever with Linux, you can tweak a dual boot arrangement so as to use that special button instead to boot up Linux.
The bad news is that it is hard if not impossible to remove Dell Media Direct cleanly and totally, and if it remains and you aren't careful, that button can mess up the MBR and/or the "grub" and you end up in infinitely deep trouble.
sudo fdisk -l