First of all I’m a total newbie with Linux, and after another disappointment from Microsoft with failure to maintain backwards compatibility for my XP Applications I’m ready to give Linux with Wine a try.

About my system:
Out of the box Dell Vostro 200
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E7200 @ 2.53GHz x2, 64-bit
Memory: 2GB
Graphics: Intel G33 (integrated)

Please forgive me if this is repeat post, but after much research I’m a bit confused.

My questions pertain to the default installation for a standalone Linux system.

I did format the hard drive as NFTS with only one partition and did the standalone installation. 

After the installation I noticed that my hard drive file system type had changed to Ext4 and there is now 3 partitions; 
Partition 1 is 158G Ext4
Partition 2 is 2.1G (not sure of the file system) 
Partition 3 (shown as Partition 5) is 2.1G swap

To me this indicates that the Ubuntu 14.04 installation reformatted the hard drive, changed the file systems and partitioned the hard drive. After the fact my research showed that this is the default configuration for a standalone Linux system. 

Question 1)
I’m fine with and actually prefer this. But does this mean I could have save ~1 hour by not formatting the hard drive?

Question 2)
Does this mean my linux-swap is fully configured and I can avoid using Gparted?

Question 3)
Where is the other two partitions, and why did the installation use 1,2 and 5?

Thanks