installing on computer with existing winxp

[runnels]

I tried the mint cassandra live. It is exactly what I am looking for as a linux distro on my ASUS. Recognizes everything, including 40gb usb disk and sata 160gb, radeon 9200 card, dsl network, plays dvd's, etc. The installation is a problem. I have looked at Linux Gazette article (linuxgazette.net/136/lazar.html) and wonder if it is good for doing cassandra. I do not want to blow my windows installation or mess up my mbr (again). If I have to 'manually' partition, what do I choose? I 'see' only two present linux 'things,' ( I have presently FC7, which I am not too happy with), most other installs ask if you want to just use existing linux partitions. Is there any such instruction for Mint?

runnels
lrunnel@bellsouth.net

[Boo]

there is this from the wiki:
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... ot_with_XP

anyway I would use gparted under administration to delete the partitions that fedora now uses.
then on install you could choose "use available free space" to install to.

but I would use manual partition to create 3 partitions:
swap 2x RAM
/ 2-3GB format ext3
/home the rest of the disk format ext3

by having a separate /home it will make upgrades much easier.

[runnels]

I appreciate the response. Yesterday I gave this a try and it enabled me to install and get the "grub" screen that lets me choose between Mint/linux and windows.
I went into windows, computer management (partitioning), and located the existing partitions for Fedora, deleted and merged them (leaving one partition of 40gb approx.; then I broke this into two parts (I and H), the first of 8 gb (the mimimum it seemed windows allowed?) and the balance of 32gb. I rebooted the mint disk and clicked install, went to partition section, used manual. Saw these as, (I recall), hda7 and hda8 (two separate 'drives'/ partitions. I made hda 7 ext3 and set it up for the root /. Then I made the 32gb the swap, and moved forward. Mint formatted these and (apparently) installed the grub/ bootloader in hda1 or hd0 (not exactly sure), but it installed perfectly and boots to the grub screen with Mint and variations in first positions and Windows in last position. Both work fine. As a precaution I have made a floppy windows boot disk from software at softpedia, which, whenever I screw up the windows mbr, I can always boot my windows, since such screwups have seldom messed up the basic windows software.

Thanks. Not sure why this all worked so well, being a relative linux newbie and mostly able to work only with gui or similar dos instructions.

Larry

[Boo]

well I'm glad it worked but...

using windows to partition can cause some real problems.
I see that you were using the tools you know so here are some pointers.

deleting the fedora partitions in windows is fine but you should have just left it un-allocated and installed mint. Doing the partitioning during the install, which you half did anyway by reformatting them, is the best option.

your swap partition only needed to be 2X the amount of RAM your system has. eg. 512MB of RAM = 1GB swap.
so you 32GB of swap is a lot of wasted disk.

you should consider reinstalling mint since it is a fresh install anyway you wont loose anything important.

so you could boot off the CD again start the install then select manual partiton, delete your / and swap partitions, and create 3 new partitions: / swap and /home.

you have got through the first time scary install and seen that it has worked, so the second time should be a walk in the park. you'll be a pro in no time at this rate.