I am looking to divide up a HDD for just Ubuntu, so the entire file system will be in ext4; there will be no file sharing with Windows so i'm not to worried about that. What I am wondering is if I arrange my partitions as shown (below) will I be able to update my distribution and keep my skins/settings/etc? Here is some basic background information:

The computer is custom built (16GB DDR3, i5 Sandy-Bridge @ 3.4 gHz) and has 2 HDD's and 1 SSD they are as follows (also the same chronological order in BIOS boot priority:

• 64 GB SSD - Windows 7 64-Bit Operating System

  
  



• 160 GB HDD - NFTS File System for program/storage space for Windows

  
  



• 500 GB HDD - EXT4 (currently unalloacted) for Ubuntu 12.04

  
  

  Here is how I am planning on breaking up the 500 GB HDD for Ubuntu, once again chronological order from start of the disk:

  
  



• 2GB (SWAP)

  
  



• 25GB Operating System Directory (Primary)

  
  



• Remainder ext4 home partition (Primary)

  
  

What I am wondering, and what I am hoping to achieve is the ability to upgrade my distributions while being able to keep my themes, settings, and files/etc in a seperate partition from the distro. Will this method enable me to do this? Or is there another method that I can take to achieve this? Is the location of my swap file correct? Is the swap file to small/large?