<SOLVED> how does the "install alongside OS" option work exactly?

[lolzhunter]

so ive seen that when you install linux mint you can choose whether to manually install it to a pre created partition, or click an option that handles it for you, unfortunately i cant seem to find specifics on how that option works aside from it makes a partition itself, like how does it decide the size of the partition, can you set the size of the partition yourself? etc.

for a quick example im trying to install linux mint on my dads old computer which is about 10 years old at this point, he has about 100gb of space on his C drive and wants to dedicate about 50gb to linux mint, but for obvious reasons he's reluctant to use the non manual option incase it takes up the whole 100gb and he runs out of space on his C drive for windows since thats his main OS, tried looking for answers online but aside from manually doing it, couldnt find an answer on how the automated process does it, would be good to know for both me and him because the last thing i want to do is mess up his computer

[lolzhunter]

ok so i found a little clarity on this, at least with manjaro, when you install alongside OS with manjaro, it gives you the option to select the device, the partition you want to install to, and a slider you can use to decide how big or small you want the linux partition to be, i cant personally confirm if this is the case with linux mint, but it is with manjaro, would still like some confirmation that this is the case with mint, if not for me then for other people in the future who also would want to know

[Catsbark]

I'm a little surprised that none of the experts has replied yet, so I'll give it a go.

It's been a while since I installed a dual-boot-on-one-drive system, but my memory is that Mint's installer works the same way Manjaro's does. So you should be able to do what you and your father want to do fairly easily.

However, 50 GB is a very small storage allotment for any current Mint version. You will need to keep very close watch over your drive usage. You could consider a few alternatives:

• SDDs are pretty cheap. If you could install a separate SSD for Miint, you would have a better experience and you wouldn't have to worry so much about your disk usage.

• Some other Linux distros use a lot less disk space than Mint. You could look for a "Light" distro.

• You and your father could look through his computer and see if there are programs and data that he isn't using. Deleting some unused stuff (or moving it to a flash drive) could free up enough room on the existing disk to give Windows and Linux more breathing room.

Whatever you decide to do, the people here on the forum will be glad to help you along. Good luck.

[AndyMH]

Yes the installer will give you the option to shrink C: providing that you have not encrypted win with bitlocker. Personally I prefer to shrink C: with win's disk management tools. Leave the space created unallocated and "install alongside", mint will use that unallocated space for a single ext4 partition for /. It will also create an EFI partition if there isn't one already.

Ten year old laptop might be booting legacy, do you know? More likely if running win7 (or win10 as an in-place upgrade from win7).
https://itsfoss.com/check-uefi-or-bios/

Why is this relevant?
With legacy boot there is only room for one bootloader, so installing mint will overwrite the win bootloader. Not really an issue because grub (the linux bootloader) will give you a menu on boot giving you the choice.

With a legacy partition table (also called msdos or mbr) you can only have four primary partitions - how many has win used up? Win10 is usually three, win7 two.

50GB is okay to have a play but get serious and it won't be long before you probably want more space.

[lolzhunter]

hello, thanks for your replies, in the end we decided its alot easier just to buy a seperate SSD and install linux on that and also in the process of researching i figured manjaro might be better for him than mint as far as future proofing incase he wants to heavily customise it at some point beyond what mints capable of, also the plasma desktop.

its good to know that its a similar process for mint though, should help people with similar situations like me who are a bit uncomfortable messing around with about 10 years worth of data on a C drive (he does have backups but better not tempt fate too much where avoidable i think lol)

and thanks for the linking of that article, that is something to be mindful of, i reckon his may use MBR so that could have gone bad since his drive has a couple partitions on it already, my main inquiry was just if it had the same features as manjaro (slider, choose device, choose partition, that kinda stuff) but it seems that it does so i suppose i can now mark the topic as solved lol