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I officially became a Linux user about 30 minutes ago when I successfully managed to install Linux Mint on my old, crashed, Dell Vostro V131.

I have the technical skills of a cucumber so please use short words and long descriptions when trying to answer this...

I have a Dell Vostro V131 with Intel i5 chip, 1st gen I believe. Windows 7 crashed irreparably and instead of rebooting with Windows I thought I would give this Linux thing a crack! I have successfully installed Linux Mint (Yay me!) But I also want to install Ubuntu to see which I like the feel of most. I would then like an additional drive to store all of my data that is available to both partitions. Is this needed? But, I'm confused! Why does Mint require so many different partitions? I have hoping to take my 1TB HDD and partition it into three virtual drives, have Mint on one, Ubuntu on another and all of my data on a third. I couldn't understand the partitioning though, can anyone help

Zanna
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jlt199
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  • ... I forgot to mention. I've managed to create an Ubuntu installation USB stick, but when I start the installation procedure it doesn't see that I have Mint installed, so won't give me the option of installing alongside it. – jlt199 Sep 11 '16 at 09:48

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When you reach the partitioning procedure, choose "Something else". All you need is a ext4 partition with / mount point (that's where the system will be installed) and a swap partition (the swap size must be between the size of your RAM and twice that size, but you would probably already have one from the mint installation so you don't need a 2nd). Some prefer to create also a separate /home partition but it's not necessary. See some more info here: How to use manual partitioning during installation?

You can also share the same /home partition between mint and ubuntu but it's not a good idea because applications store their settings there and different versions on different distros can cause problems. So if you want a data partition, just create another partition (without any mount point) or leave an empty space and after the installation use gparted or Disks (gnome-disk-utility) to create a partition of your empty space (you can also make it to be mounted at startup).

Community
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Thanos Apostolou
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  • I went to "something else" but I was still confused. So I ran gparted to try and free-up some space, but it wouldn't let me resize any of the existing partitions. I'm now wondering if I should install Ubuntu "cleverly" to leave free space for Mint afterwards. Any thoughts? – jlt199 Sep 11 '16 at 10:57
  • I've tried to post an image of what I see when I go to something else, but I can't figure out how to. If this would be helpful please tell me how to do it – jlt199 Sep 11 '16 at 11:15
  • @jlt199 Yeah an image would be really helpful. When you boot with live ubuntu, choose Try instead of Install. Then start the installation from the desktop link and when you get to the decision point take a screenshot (a screenshot application must be preinstalled, search it from the dash if the Print keyboard button doesn't work). Then choose "something else" and take a screenshot there so that I can see the partitions. Finally upload them at http://imgur.com/ and provide these 2 links to your question. – Thanos Apostolou Sep 11 '16 at 11:23
  • http://imgur.com/h7khmy0 http://imgur.com/1iI94gS

    Did that work? It won't let me upload to the community so I'm not sure whether you can see them or not

     – jlt199 Sep 11 '16 at 11:51
  • @jlt199 Yeah I can see them but I can't help you since these /dev/mapper entries are probably LVM logical volumes which I'm not familiar with. The only way I could do it, is to reinstall mint using mint's live cd with custom partitioning (200 GB / partition, 8 GB swap partition) and then install ubuntu using ubuntu's live cd (200 GB / partition). With the reset space I would create an ext4 partition for data storage). I imagine you don't want to reinstall everything so put the images' links to your question and wait for answer. I will delete my answer in a few minutes. – Thanos Apostolou Sep 11 '16 at 13:10
  • Thanks for your advise. I have now installed both Ubuntu and Mint, but the system is not dual booting; only booting Ubuntu. Can anyone help with this? My current view in Disks looks like this http://imgur.com/EprKG2I – jlt199 Sep 11 '16 at 15:21
  • @jlt199 Open a terminal and run the command sudo update-grub. It should do the trick. – Thanos Apostolou Sep 11 '16 at 16:31
  • Woohoo, I have no idea what a grub is, or why it needed updating, but that worked a treat. Many thanks – jlt199 Sep 11 '16 at 17:04
  • @jlt199 Grub is the bootaloader (software that your pc needs to boot into the operating system) and for some reason grub didn't update itself when you installed the 2nd OS, so the command update-grub does that (update means to find the rest operating systems). If you want you can use Disks app (gnome-disk-utility) to make the rest partitions automounted at boot (if you need help to do that let me know). Since we finally solved it, I won't delete the answer after all . – Thanos Apostolou Sep 11 '16 at 20:19