dual boot - Can I have my software on a different partition than the base installation?

I'm planning to install Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 alongside an existing Windows 8.1 installation (following the guide on Installing Ubuntu Alongside a Pre-Installed Windows with UEFI).

I've partitioned my hard disk as follows at the moment:

• 1000MB healthy recovery partition


• 260MB healthy EFI system partition


• 1000MB healthy OEM partition


• ~427GB NTFS healthy (boot, page file, crash dump, primary) (Windows 8.1; C:)


• ~16GB unallocated


• 450MB healthy recovery partition


• ~439GB NTFS healthy primary partition (B:)


• 25GB NTFS healthy primary partition, don't want to touch it, it's the Lenovo partition (D:)


• 20GB healthy recovery partition

I probably can shrink the C-disk at the end and make a new partition of at least around 40GB.

If possible, it would be my preference to create a new partition there and install Ubuntu on that one. That way, I keep about half the disk for the B-disk, without any installation, so I can use it for backups.

However, I'm not sure if 40GB will be enough if I would install a lot of additional software (would it?). There will not be any data there as I will put it all on B:. Would it be possible to have the ubuntu base installation in one partition and all additional software on another one?

If that's possible, I assume that 16GB is more than enough for the base installation. Is this correct? Then I don't have to shrink the C-disk. In the guide I linked earlier, they say at least 8GB, but better 20GB.

However, I'm not sure if 40GB will be enough if I would install a lot of additional software (would it?).

I have yet to get over 10Gb for all software I installed and that includes Apache and MySQL (with the database on a 2nd partition). Excluding my personal data since I keep that on another disk.

There will not be any data there as I will put it all on B:. Would it be possible to have the ubuntu base installation in one partition and all additional software on another one?

Yes, if you install software from source you can choose where it needs to install. But ... I would not bother. It is a lot of hassle and not worth the time.

If that's possible, I assume that 16GB is more than enough for the base installation. Is this correct? Then I don't have to shrink the C-disk. In the guide I linked earlier, they say at least 8GB, but better 20GB.

20Gb is included /home/. It is pretty easy to keep /home/ under 2.5Gb by moving all the directories to another partition and use that to store your personal data with a symlink to /home/.