What is the best way for me to have Linux on my laptop?

[MrMarcDee]

Ok. Its nice to know that the shrinking/growing functions are more stable than I realized. I haven't used Gparted's more advanced features like that for quite a while.

I just think it is poor practice to not make two partitions from the get go when you know you will be installing two OSs. Failing to plan is planning to fail

 

[MindoverMaster]

If you didn't know you were dual booting, what can you do? You just shrink it. All you can do without reinstalling everything.

 

[KSoD]

Ok. Its nice to know that the shrinking/growing functions are more stable than I realized. I haven't used Gparted's more advanced features like that for quite a while.

I just think it is poor practice to not make two partitions from the get go when you know you will be installing two OSs. Failing to plan is planning to fail

If you buy a pre-built machine how can you partition the hard drive before you install the OS? You have no option to select such a feature when you go through Dell or any other manufacturer's website. Considering that the person has an older Toshiba Laptop, i think it would be safe to say that there is no way they could have done such a task. So it isnt a failure to plan or planning to fail when that option is not available.

I think it is poor practice to place such comments and judgements on people when you fail to take into consideration such things. That only makes you look bad while talking down onto others.

 

[kmote]

Mak, in post #7 the OP said that they installed win7 on 11/11/10.

 

[KSoD]

Yes but in the OP, they said they were upgrading to Win7. While you cant keep your settings in a upgrade, you can still keep your files in a windows.old file. So you dont have to loss everything on the PC. There is no saying how the upgrade was done, so it is a safe bet to say that the DVD was inserted and Win7 installed right over XP. So the comment would still be the same as they didnt partition the drive cause that would result in losing your partition tables as well as your data if you did it before you installed Win7. During the install process you cant shrink partitions, it isnt an option available with the Windows install media.

So i can understand that they upgraded recently. But given the little bit of information, i took the logical route as to how it would have been done to save their personal data.