I'm trying to install Ubuntu-MATE 18.04.4 on a new, empty, external standalone 1 terabyte SSD.
I have 2 other drives in my desktop workstation, so in the installer I selected "do not use" for the swap spaces on those drives.
I then selected to create an 8 GB swap space for the SSD as a "logical" or extended partition at the end of the SSD's empty space. (Since my desktop box has 8 GB of RAM.)
Then I set up one large primary partition for both "/" (root) and /home directories from "Beginning of space" using the ext4 filesystem.
I selected for the bootloader to be on "sde" which is the SSD.
But when I click on "Install now," the informational box that pops up says that the large primary partition will be partition 2, and that the 8 GB swap partition will be partition 5.
The installer wants partitions 1, 3 and 4 to be "unallocated space" partitions. Is this normal? I defined just 2 partitions. I don't understand why the installer wants to create five partitions on my SSD.
Since I want to understand what's going on with this, I did not go ahead with the install.
Can anyone shed light on what's going on here?
What would be "standard"? Seems like a lot of space is getting wasted with three "unallocated space" partitions. How would I correct this so as to limit the number of partitions and also not have unused or wasted space. Or do I want some small bit of free or unallocated space as, say, one partition?
Could I avoid all this if the first partition I create is the large / and home as primary, from the beginning of the space (leaving only 10 GB at the end), then, secondly, create the 8 GB swap space from "end of space" (or even from "beginning of space" which would be at the end of the primary partition, with 2 GB at the end - thoough maybe that would create a 3rd partition.)
Will I still end up with more than 2 partitions? Or rather, how can I do this to have only 2 (and is it ok to want just 2, or is there some need for a third partition to have "free space". Is there generally a need for free space with an SSD?
My hardware:
Metal: System76 Wild Dog, 64-bit, 4-core Q9650 3GHz, 8 GB ram.
Graphics: PNY Nvidia GeForce GTS 450, driver v. 367.44.
OSs: Ubuntu Mate 16.04 & 14.04.
Drives: 2 960-GB Sandisk SSDs.