Boot Indicator?

It doesn't matter / serve any purpose. Anyway, Ubuntu allows you to partition and will take care of everything for you during the installation. As far as I know, the only thing under Windows is to make sure it only covers part of the disk and leaves at least 10GiB for Ubuntu to install (space unallocated at this stage).

Then you restart from an Ubuntu installation CD and follow the guided instructions. You just need to be careful during partitioning not to delete your Windows and make sure to tell Ubuntu to create its partitions in the vacant space. Ideally, do a manual partitioning.

Classic partitioning:
- 1GiB for swap (as swap)
- 9GiB for / (as ext4)
- the rest for /home (as ext4) (size according to your needs, this is equivalent to "My Documents").

If you end up with more than 4 partitions with Windows, you will need to create your Ubuntu partitions in an extended partition. An extended partition is simply a partition that can be sliced into sub-partitions (logical or secondary partitions).

Good luck!

Thank you for your response; I had a doubt about the boot indicator. ;-)

For partitioning, since I have a 40GB disk, I was planning to do:
- 1Gi for swap (as swap)
- 20Gi for / (as ext4)
- the rest for /home (as ext4)

Is this okay, or is 20Gi too much for the root?

My Windows hard drive is partitioned into 3 (C:, D:, E:).
Do I need to create an extended partition for Ubuntu, knowing that it is on another hard drive?

Is it okay, or is 20GB too much for the root?

Well, 10GB or 20GB... it doesn't really make much difference these days. A pure text-mode Linux should require around 3GB, a fairly complete graphical mode about 5GB, a complete PC around 10GB. With 20GB, you're giving yourself a bit of extra reserve.

In any case, whether it's 10GB or 20GB, nowadays disks are large so you can indulge yourself. Plus, a partition can be resized if needed (cf e2resize). When the machine doesn't have Windows, we can use LVM instead of MBR, which makes things easier. If you're curious:
http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/lvm

Do I need to create an extended partition for Ubuntu knowing that it is on another hard drive?

No no, the limit of 4 primary partitions only applies per disk and is due to the MBR model. A primary partition can be

- a physical partition (typically, Windows must be installed on a physical partition)
- an extended partition (which we will split into logical partitions or secondary partitions).

I encourage you to read this:
http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/partitions

Since Linux is a real operating system, you can install it without issues on multiple logical partitions of an extended partition. Given your current partitioning, you don't have a choice. Under Windows, you need to make sure that your three partitions C:, D:, E: do not cover the entire disk.

Under Windows Vista and Windows 7, you can easily resize a partition via the disk management tool (right-click on My Computer, manage, disk management). It’s in this space that you will create your extended partition when installing Ubuntu. This extended partition will be divided into three logical partitions (swap, /, /home).

In practice, nothing prevents you from separating / and /home, just as we could imagine a Linux without swap (as long as we have enough RAM, it works). This would allow you to fall to 4 partitions and therefore not have an extended partition. But that remains risky, and not partitioning this way has drawbacks (long fsck time, what to do when you run out of RAM, etc.). So, I encourage you to install your Linux on an extended partition.

Good luck!

I will study the links you gave me a bit.
Thank you very much for all this information and details. ;-)

You're welcome and have a great continuation :-)