Linux Mint Dual Boot Install Started

I actually started my Linux Mint/Vista dual boot install yesterday, using this page as a basic guide. Unfortunately, the Vista Disk Management Shrink Volume tool wasn't able to give me any space. It declared that no space was available due to the use of a page file.

No matter, I can use something else. I found an old copy of gparted in my pile of Linux CDs, but decided to download a newer version. V 0.3.4-11 is the latest. I burned it and fired it up. However, I could never get it to boot, as it hung trying to install something for RAID disks (of which I have none). I tried to boot on another machine, just to see if the CD was OK, and it got past that point quickly, only to fail to start X. Just for yucks, I tried my older version (0.2.4.3) from last year. It booted fine, but the device scan never finished.

Time to punt. This morning I booted up to the Linux Mint Live CD and attempted to install gparted, and I found it was already there! V 0.3.3-2 is close enough to new for me! It ran fine, and I was able to shave 30GB from the hard drive in about 10 minutes. Suddenly, things are getting easy.

gparted - After Shrink

Before I go any further, I'm going to reboot into Vista to let it scan the disk and make sure things are OK.

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After a quick scan, all is well (although Vista picked that moment to install some quick security fix that required another reboot - no biggie).

I guess now it's time to hit the Install icon and see what happens.

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I like this graphical install tool better than the character based one I used with Ubuntu 7.04. I selected language, keyboard, and time zone without incident.

Whenever I get to the disk partition step, I get a little nervous. Sure, I've backed up the important stuff from the Vista partition, but it would still take a lot of time to get that back to the way I like it. Fingers crossed, I forged ahead.

My plan is to have a fat32 partition that I can use in both operating systems. It can be used to store shared configurations for Firefox and Thunderbird, and to store other files I may need from either, such as downloaded files and music. Here's a screen shot of the the partitioner just before I committed the changes:



It didn't like the fat32 partion mounted as /home, so I changed it to /shared while pushing the size down to 10GB. The root partition was increased to 20GB. This config was approved.

Well, it's time to push the final button. Here goes!

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Success! I booted into Mint without incident. Interestingly, there are two entries for Vista in the GRUB list. I'll have to try them both out to see what they do.

After I logged in, I was notified that there were proprietary drivers available for the wireless - as covered in this earlier post. I'll configure it shortly.

I've got other things to work on: video settings for the two screens (monitor and laptop display), wireless, server access, and other software I've read about and would like to try. Watch for new posts as I try things out.