[ale] Setting up dual boot machine

[Brian Pitts]

Preston Boyington wrote:
> 
> on a dual-boot machine with an existing Windows partition, i would grab 
> a livecd and use it to resize the drive & create a new empty partition 
> with all the free space i wanted for my linux os.  then i would install 
> linux and use the included program to create whatever linux partitions i 
> was going to use.

The downside to giving this advice to "newbies" is that it makes the
installation more difficult. I'll compare it with Ubuntu since that's
the only thing I've set up as dual-boot for some time.

1) They have to download, burn, and boot a second livecd. This cd
probably won't have a tool, like Ubuntu's does, that lets you boot it
without changing your BIOS boot order.

2) They have to understand a great deal of concepts related to disks,
partitions, filesystems, and how to work with them from GParted. In the
Ubuntu installer, they just have to drag a slider choosing how much
space they want to use.

3) They have to change the installer's behavior from the default
(shrinking the existing partition and creating new ones afterwards) to
use their newly created free space.

If you have Windows taking up 100% of your disk, the Ubuntu installer
will do the right thing. (Assuming your definition of the right thing is
leaving a working windows installation.)

> it's probably extra (and maybe unnecessary) steps, but for me it comes 
> down to being outside the workings of the disk while i am moving bits 
> around.

This is where I don't follow you. The installation cd and program are
"outside the workings of the disk". None of the partitions are mounted
while they are bring rejiggered.

-Brian