Dual boot Linux Mint 13, yes or no?

[AraSarkisyan]

I've been using Linux mint in a virtual machine for the past two weeks and love it. However, if I went about dual booting this plus windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, would this mess up anything on my computer? 

[piplupgao]

If you do it right, no

[Samdb]

I wouldn't. If possible get a separate drive that it can be installed on.

[WoodenMarker]

Nope. It'd create an annoying partition though.

[Jechu182]

I agree, I had it setup that way, but it was a pain to get all the partitions set correctly and not mess up my Windows 7 partition... I would install it on a different drive. 

[lutzee]

Installing linux next to windows on the same drive is achievable, but precautions need to be made before doing so.

 

If windows is using the entire drive for its partition you'll need to reduce the partition size. Gparted (the partitioning tool that comes with most distro installers can do this)

Before you go jumping into reducing the partition down, 1st back up any important data, then do a full deep defrag of the windows partition, this should move all the files neatly into the start of the partition. This can take some time to do, probably >24hours.

After this you should be safe to reduce the size of the windows partition down, its up to you how much, generally I keep my linux partitions >50GB.

After the window partition has been reduced in size you can use the freed space to make your linux partition.

When installing grub will ask if it wants to be installed to the MBR (master boot record), This is pretty standard but will overwrite the windows boot manager.

Installing to the MBR is fine, grub will pick up on your windows installation and you will be able to pick which OS to boot from when you start your PC.

 

 

Alternatively if you do buy a new drive you can skip the messing with the windows partitioning and install to the new drive. You'll still want to install grub to the MBR though.