Joe,
Virtually all distros want a separate and specific partition for swap formatted as swap.

Virtually all distros allow you to put everything else in a single partition although there are reasons why you might want to break that up into 2 or more partitions (and lots of people will give you differing advice.  Personally, I choose to use one partition for / and the bulk of available space for /home.

The above assumes you want to do your partitioning manually.  While you could do that prior to installation, you can also do it during installation.  If you do it prior to installation, please note that you will still need to specify how you are using the partitions (mount points) during the installation

If you want to let the distro automatically do the partitioning, then you should not create any partitions prior to installation.

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 9:23 PM, <joe@actionline.com> wrote:

Thanks Stephen.  I did download the gparted live iso and used it to shrink
the ntfs partition. Then I created two new partitions, one for 40-gig and
one for 80-gig.  But when I started to install the first new Linux distro
from a live Linux CD into the first new 40-gig partition, I couldn't tell
if it was going to allow me to create the separate partitions for swap,
root, and home inside that 40-gig partition that I had created (and then
later do the same for a second Linux distro into the other 80-gig
partition that I created).  So, I now wonder if I need to do this over and
create 6 new partitions instead of just 2 in order to be able to install
two Linux distros into a triple-boot arrangement.

I have tried a mint live CD in the past and liked some things about it.
So, I wonder if I could or should create 9 new partitions in order to add
it also and create a quad-boot?

Suggestions?


> First thing I would do is get familiar with clonezilla and the gparted
> live CD. That will give yo a means of recovery and a means of partition
> editing. Once you have the partitions in place you can the do some
> reading on grub/grub2. But in all honesty I have had great success with
> mint/ubuntu and virtualbox and I like the debian package management.
> But most here are likely to use vm's over triple booting so we would
> have good advice I'm doubting that we have a walkthrough handy.
>
> That being said you can probably search the internet and find what you are
> looking for. And I would be willing to give you what advice I can.
> On Feb 26, 2012 3:57 PM, <joe@actionline.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Even after having done several Linux installations (some a lot more
>> challenging than others), I am still a bit intimidated by it.
>>
>> Now, I'm about to undertake another and I hope the PLUG brain trust can
>> provide some guidance, perhaps a concise installation checklist for this
>> next attempt.  I have a box with win-xp installed on a 100-gig HD and I
>> need the following:
>>
>> 1. How (most efficiently) to shrink and repartition for a dual boot with
>> xp on perhaps 20 gig and the rest for installing two Linux distros.
>>
>> 2. I've installed PCLinuxOS several times and I (by far) prefer the
>> older
>> version with KDE 3.5, so I want to put it on one set of partitions using
>> about 20-gig.
>>
>> 3. On the rest, I want to install whatever Redhat based distro might
>> work
>> best with Virtual Box (which I have never been able to get to work
>> before).
>> Some have recommended Cent OS (I've been told that there is a KDE 3.5
>> version available).
>>
>> Any guidance to make this as concise, easy, and efficient as possible
>> for
>> a 20-year perpetual "newbie" user would be extremely appreciated. ;)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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