new to linux and would like some help/ advice on set up etc

Linux Support
1

hi all im new to the world of linux and would like some help setting it up …

ok im not very good at explaining things but heres what i want to do …

ok at the moment i have vista home premium , and i would like to dual boot with linux . I have downloaded and burned the iso for linuxmint-10-gnome-dvd-i386 using image burn and would like to install it . I understand there are many ways to do this but the best from what i can gather is having it on an internal hard drive . OK on my computer by clicking start then computer it says i have 2 hard disk drives acer c:\ 39.1gb free of 69.7gb and data d:\ 69.3 gb free of 69.7gb… as the c:\ is all windows stuff i have accumulated over a couple of years , i would like to put linux on the d:\ (if possible )… and have it all set up so that when i turn my computer on instead of going to windows login screen it gives me the option to boot into linux instead. so if anyone could guide me with an idiots guide to do this i would be very grateful …

heres a bit of info about my system if needed

acer aspire m1610
vista home premium 32 bit
intel pentium dual cpu e2160 1.8ghz
2 gb Ram
nvidia 9400gt

BIOS …ACRSYS-42302e31 pheonix-awardbios v6.00pg pheonix-awardbios v6.00pg

2

Is it 2 separate “physical” hard drives, or 1 hard drive with 2 partitions? … Check in the Windows Disk Manager… see video and link below.

How to Delete/Remove your Partition on Windows Vista

and/or

If it’s 2 partitions on 1 hard drive, follow the instructions in the above video to delete the D: partition, leaving the space “Unallocated”.

If it’s a separate drive, just delete the whole partition on that drive… Just make SURE you delete the D: partition, and NOT your Windows partition.

In either case, don’t follow the video after deleting the partition to extend the other partition… just leave the space “Unallocated”.

OK, now you’ve created some empty space on the drive… shut down Windows and boot to the Linux Mint LiveCD.

When asked, select “Try Mint” not “Install Mint” (just to test it works)

Once at the Mint Desktop, click the “Install Mint” icon.

Follow the instructions, and when it ask where to put Linux… see pic below.

http://linuxforums.org.uk/MGalleryItem.php?id=1052

Just tell it to use the unpartitioned space (if it was a separate physical drive, you will have to select the unpartitioned drive from the “Select drive:” pull down menu.

After answering a few questions, the rest should be automagic.

Screenshots of ALL the installation screens can be seen here:

I know they are for Ubuntu, But the Mint ones are the same… Mint is based on Ubuntu.

One last thing… when you get to “Pick a username:”… NO CAPITAL letters, or it will not let you continue… you CAN have capitals in the other fields such as “Password” and “Your name”, just not in the Username.

3

hello mate thanks for the reply …

it was one drive with 2 partitions so i done as the video said up until it said unallocated space then stopped and rebooted into the cd . ok i got to the bit about where i want to put it . like in the screenshot allocate drive space and it says windows recovery (something or other ) 69.2gb then to the side it says mint . now if i drag it across the windows recovery or what ever it said decreases and the mint increases , so is that making the 69gb i have for windows smaller or is it just increasing the amount of space i want to install mint too . for eg i slide it across and get it to say mint 50gb is that what im allowing it to use , but then windows decreases so that i dont have much space left on windows lol told ya im no good explaining , i understand it in my head but probably gobbledygook to you

4

Don’t use the slider for now… just reboot to the LiveCD, and when you get to that screen tell me how big it says the “Mint” partition and the Windows" partition is/are.

ie. from left to right, give me the partition names, locations, and sizes.
(everything contained in ALL the boxes)… from left to right.

eg.

left box = Mint 10, /dev/sda3, 69GB

next box = Windows, /dev/sda1, 69GB

Slider

right box = Unallocated

etc.

Or take a screenshot (PrintScrn) and upload it to Flickr (or similar), and give me a link to it.

5

lol this is getting cofusing …

i i took screens but could not find em after … so i jotted everything down

ok when clicking install alongside here is what it said

selected drive 160gb ata etc etc

allocate drive space by dragging divider below

ok where the slider things are it says

windows recovery enviroment(loader) dev/sda2 ntfs 69.2gb … u could just about see that it said mint 5gb

when sliding across to see linuxmint (fully across) linuxmint dev/sda3 ext4 32gb for windows 42.1 for linux…2 smaller partitions hidden

ok here is what it said when select specific partitions

the bar at top says …sda1 ntfs 10.5gb…sda2 ntfs 74.9gb…free space 74.6gb

and in the box under it says

dev/sda1 ntfs size10478 used6714
dev/sda2 ntfs size74918 used 32888
free space 74643

sda1 i think is vista loader and sda2 is recovery enviro loader

also in specific if i check free space and press add it comes up with options , now before doing anything i thought i would ask incase in totally wrong

ok after pressing add it says create new partition … would this install it the way i want to by doing the following …check type of new partition as primary , new size 74643, location beginning , use as ext 4 journaling file file system …if i done that would it be right to or am i getting ahead of myself … thanks for ya help btw

6

thanks for all your help mark your’re a legend take it easy

7

Solved in chat by booting to the Mint LiveCD and using gparted to create an ext4 partition in the unallocated space on the hard drive… then installing Mint… the Installer then automatically offered to install Mint to the correct partition.