As I noted in an earlier posting, it was easy to get Windows 7 (also works with Vista) to partition my netbook's hard drive, creating a 10GB area exclusively for Linux. (Go to Computer | Manage | Disk Management, and then right-click: Shrink.)
Initially, I installed Ubuntu Remix into the partition, and that was also easy.
But when it came to replace Remix with Linux Mint, it took a bit of extra thinking. The installer didn't know what to do, because both partitions were used -- one by 7RC, one by Remix. The only choices presented to me were to (1) blow away Windows and Remix or (2) do a manual selection.
Now, I am very nervous about manually determining partitions, because it involves knowing terms like sda5 and ext3. But by observing what Remix had done installing itself into the 10GB partition, I figured out what I needed to do manually for Mint:
- Select partition sda5
- Specify file system ext3
- Choose to install as / (root)
It still didn't work, at least not quite. The other thing I needed to do was to format partition sda5 to erase Remix. (This is perfectly safe, because the computer treats partitions as if they were different hard drives.) This is only dangerous if you get the name of the partition wrong!
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