linux install/partition?

[Clip]

for all you linux users out there: configuring for a dual boot xp/linux with xp already installed.

i've got a live CD of linux mint 5, and everything goes correctly up until i try to install it to the hard drive of my comp. i'll get to the point where i ask the installer to partition my hard drive for me and i get an error message saying the partitioning failed.

it then shows me an ntfs partition and a fat32 partition, the ntfs is quite large and the fat is small. anyone know which partitions i have to add to get this to work? i've seen a few writeups but don't really want to risk erasing the rest of the comp. i've also heard things about gparted.

anyone?

 

[suprakid24]

I know that when I dual booted my HP laptop with Ubuntu, I had to take off the recovery drive (I put it onto a terabyte drive) and then it let me use a slider to determine how much memory for each XP/Ubuntu. I let it do it automatically after that and it worked.

 

[Clip]

thats where im at now, i can move the slider to give mint about 20% of my drive (roughly 15 gb) and it gives me the error message after i ask it to create partitions.

what do you mean by recovery drive

 

[suprakid24]

on XP I had my C: drive and then another drive that was the backup or recovery drive, and with it on there it wouldn't let me use the slider or access my hard drive at all to partition it.

 

[Clip]

gotcha, i've got an external hard drive that i use to back everything up, but its not portable. i don't have two drives on the laptop.

 

[suprakid24]

well, it wasn't really a separate drive, it was just a partition on my drive I worded it wrong

 

[Poodles]

all the space is already used on your drive, that's why it's not working...

Best bet is to have a completely seperate drive for linux as it can use a far better format system which is much faster.

Or am I the only one with 2 drives?

 

[annoyingrob]

What you need to do is re-size the NTFS partition to make room for linux. You can get windows utilities to do it.

Linux installations don't normally like shrinking NTFS partitions.

 

[Poodles]

NTFS sucks anyway if you understand how it functions...

 

[Doward]

That's for damn sure.

XFS ftw (with a decent modern computer, especially!)

That said, you need more room. If I were you, I would just play with the LiveCD for a while. I prefer Fedora, for what it's worth.

 

[The1]

Ubuntu 8.04 user over here....

But I shrunk the Windows partition in Vista. Then I chose to download from the bootscreen. (has been running Linux for a while so I really didn't need to play in it.). Went through the install and when it came to the partition section, I guided it to the largest open partition, which is the partition set up in Windows. Everything loads normally, then I reboot into Linux a happier man..lol.

 

[Clip]

noob - how can i get windows utilities to resize my NTFS partition?

another try - i used auslogics to defrag my hard drive instead of windows, it went from 20% fragmented to 1.5% the report told me.

 

[annoyingrob]

Partition Magic will resize the NTFS partition in windows. It's not free though.

 

[Clip]

worked with perfectdisk, got everything defragged about 8 times with 3 different programs and grouped my paging files. afterward it worked great, and now im trying to learn linuxmint.

 

[foreverpsycotic]

That's for damn sure.

XFS ftw (with a decent modern computer, especially!)

That said, you need more room. If I were you, I would just play with the LiveCD for a while. I prefer Fedora, for what it's worth.

Fedora FTW.

 

[Clip]

which have you guys found to be the fastest? i've heard talk of debian being a good one right now, and linux mint ahead of ubuntu so i went with mint.

 

[annoyingrob]

Fastest?

I would look for ease of use personally.

Ubuntu is by far the most noob-friendly linux distro out there.

With that being said, I'm a die-hard Fedora fan.

 

[Clip]

Fastest?

I would look for ease of use personally.

Ubuntu is by far the most noob-friendly linux distro out there.

With that being said, I'm a die-hard Fedora fan.

the GUI is what drove me away from debian and towards other distros.