Linux/Partitioning

TristanM · Post by **TristanM** » Thu May 03, 2007 2:40 pm

I want to play around with Linux a bit, if I find it to be useable (for me, I'm not looking for a debate about Vista vs. Linux) I may switch over altogether. So, I have two questions -

The first is in two parts - Can I partition a HD w/o formatting or re-installing Vista and how? I should probably mention that I would prefer not to partition into two equally sized drives. I have 180GB and would probably, for testing purposes like 40-50GB on one side, the rest on the other.

The second - Which version of Linux do you recommend? Bearing in mind I want (for now) as little screwing around as possible. I don't mind command line stuff, but I want it to be useable without having to spend the next six months learning every command to get it working properly. Some have mentioned Ubuntu to me before. Any thought appreciated.

In the end, if it's not something I can do w/o too much trouble I can use the other laptop (but that leaves my g/f w/o one for the duration of testing.)

@Kenc51 - I looked up Gparted, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of explanation on the site to know if it meets the above requirements before I dowload it.

stopthekilling77 · Post by **stopthekilling77** » Thu May 03, 2007 4:13 pm

my 2 cents: download the ISO for the latest version of Ubuntu off http://www.ubuntu.com/ and burn the image to CD, should be able to boot from the Live CD, and install from there, helping to partition, etc...

Xanlamin · Post by **Xanlamin** » Thu May 03, 2007 11:29 pm

When doing Linux on the same drive as another OS, it is better to install linux first then install the windows OS, linux reguires more than 1 partition something you can not do without the posiable risk of data loss if you already have windows installed.