I'm not an expert on this matter, but from the documentation that I've read the extra 5GB partition is a restore partition that allows you to reinstall Ubuntu just as you got it from the factory.  I believe you can boot to it from the grub.  Dell has been doing this on their Windows machines for ages, so it only makes sense that they would do this for their Linux machines.

The iso that was in your home folder is just another copy of this; it just needs to be burned to a CD/DVD.  Again, both of these images of the OS are the remastered images that Dell used at the factory;  they contain various bug fixes and other customizations to make the OS more user friendly for less-techincally-inclined people.  You can read more about the changes at the dell linux wiki.

If you want to reinstall Ubuntu with custom partitions, your best bet is to download and burn an iso from Ubuntu. 

As far as I know, both installation methods do not allow you to customize the installation.  If you reinstall using the DVD (or any other Linux distro CD/DVD), the restore partition will either be erased or unusable.  So on the downside you can no longer do a quick and easy factory restore, but on the upside you gain 5GB of storage space.

Hope that helps,

srjs8812 

Hello,

Thanks for the info, particularly the pointer to the Wiki, I didn't even know there was one. Any ideas if installing from the DVD would recreate the Utility partition? I'll try to leave the utility there, and just reinstall over the rest, but I'll remove the OS partition, as I have the .iso somewhere else and I want that space.

Thanks. 

I'm not too sure about the Utility partition.  I've worked on a lot of Windows Dell machines, and I know that if Windows needed to be reinstalled off of a disk, you could kiss the Utility partition goodbye (its still there, you just can boot to it).  The main reason for this was b/c of how Windows handles the MBR on the disk.  There are ways of fixing it, but the process is involved (if I recall correctly).

As for reinstalling Linux, since the remastered DVD contains the custom Dell image I don't see why it would hose the Utility partition, since the install is just like it was before it was shipped out.  If you were to use a generic disc though, I'm sure it would break the utility partition.  My experience in this venture is limited though; I've only done this twice on a dell system and both times I never bothered to test the Utility partition.  I would imagine if you installed grub to the mbr, it would overwrite the current mbr that points to the utility partition and you would get a similar situation to most Windows reinstalls (partition there, yet unusable).

You might be able to point Grub to the utility partition to see if you could boot off of it.  A quick search on google came up with this forum post that, after I quickly glanced through it, has instructions to that effect.

Then again, I'm not an expert on Dell systems or their utility partition so I could be incorrect.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do :smileyhappy:

srjs8812

There's a document on Ubuntu ISO, you can created partision by using manual partition, do not use a Ubuntu partition. you can control all partision on your storage space.

or if you like to try my own created Linux Distro, i made it under Slackware12 it's running good on DELL Desktop, Notebook, Even on DELL Server.

Peace,

Katro