[SOLVED] Installing to Dual-Boot with Windows

[me269]

Hello

My mother has an old laptop that is painfully slow running Windows 10, so I have offered to install Linux Lite. It needs to be dual boot with Windows 10 as she has never used Linux before and it will take some time to get used to it.

I have defragmented the hard drive and have shrunk the C:\ partition in Windows to create an unpartitioned, unused, free space that is 256 GB in size. I have disabled secure boot and Windows fast startup. 

Please excuse my ignorance as I am a novice at this. I need some advice regarding which options to select during installation as I have seen conflicting guidelines:

1. "Install Linux alongside Windows Boot Manager"

2. The Help manual Install Guide states "Select Something else from this screen if you wish to dual boot with Windows or edit existing partitions (or both)." It then goes on to state that a 500 MB EFI system partition should be created, but I am unsure whether I need to do this as the Windows boot manager efi partition already exists. If I do need to create it, I am guessing it should be taken from my 256 GB of free space? It then states to "Click on the free space partition and click the Change button. Select Ext4 journaling file system, place a tick in Format the partition and select / as the Mount point." I am ok with this but I am confused whether I need to give mount points to the existing NTFS partitions (all created by windows install) as there is a comment regarding NTFS drives. If so, what do I need to set these to? "NOTE: If you have any other NTFS drives, it is important to give these a mount point during the install. That way they will be easily accessible after the installation".

3. I have seen an instructional video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhpu9TJmvAU, from 7:30 onwards) that suggests four new partitions need to be made from the 256 GB of free space. i) boot, ii) swap, iii) /home, iv) /root. 

Please can someone explain to me which of the above 3 options I need to follow to make sure that Linux lite is installed alongside windows with the grub bootloader such that I can choose which of Linux Lite and Windows to start upon reboot. 

I have taken pictures of the options screen and the existing partitioning and have pasted the Imgur BBCodes below. I have also pasted the results from Inxi to show the hardware. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Matthew

System:
  Kernel: 6.8.0-47-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce 4.18.1
  Distro: Linux Lite 7.2 LTS
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: HP product: HP Notebook v: Type1ProductConfigId
  serial: <filter>
  Mobo: HP model: 81E5 v: KBC Version 73.16 serial: <filter> UEFI: Insyde
  v: F.32 date: 08/09/2018
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: AMD A8-7410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 Graphics
  bits: 64 type: MCP L2 cache: 2048 KiB
  Speed: 998 MHz min/max: 1000/2200 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 998 2: 1000
  3: 998 4: 1000
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics] driver: radeon v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 21.1.11 driver: ati,radeon
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: KABINI (radeonsi LLVM 17.0.6 DRM 2.50 6.8.0-47-generic)
  v: 4.5 Mesa 24.0.9-0ubuntu0.2
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Kabini HDMI/DP Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-2: AMD FCH Azalia driver: snd_hda_intel
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k6.8.0-47-generic
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet driver: r8169
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
  driver: rtl8723be
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 650.9 MiB (0.1%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD10JPVX-60JC3T0
  size: 931.51 GiB
  Optical-1: /dev/sr0 vendor: hp model: DVDRW GUD1N dev-links: cdrom
  Features: speed: 62 multisession: yes audio: yes dvd: yes
  rw: cd-r,cd-rw,dvd-r,dvd-ram








https://imgur.com/zP3gTtT

[stevef]

Back up the current working W10 installation using something like clonezilla prior to starting as insurance.

I haven't done a dual boot install for a while, but I believe all three methods you've researched are viable.
The simplest is option 1 (install alongside Windows 10). Ensure the installer is directed to use the free space you've made.

[me269]

Back up the current working W10 installation using something like clonezilla prior to starting as insurance.

I haven't done a dual boot install for a while, but I believe all three methods you've researched are viable.
The simplest is option 1 (install alongside Windows 10). Ensure the installer is directed to use the free space you've made.

Thank you very much for your response. How do I ensure that the installer is directed to use the free space? 

If I choose "Install Linux alongside Windows Boot Manager" (option 1), I get the following message:
"The following partitions are going to be formatted: partition #6 of SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) as ext4"

How do I know that partition #6 is the free space? Is it automatically selected because there are already 5 existing partitions?

Or would it be safer to choose the "Something else" option and use option 2 or 3? If so which of option 2 or 3 is more likely to be successful?

Thank you

[stevef]

How do I know that partition #6 is the free space? Is it automatically selected because there are already 5 existing partitions?

Choosing 'install alongside windows' is the easy option for the user and the installer generally makes sensible choices but an element of trust is involved.  The installer knows about the 5 existing partitions and tells you it is going to create a 6th so you can be reasonably sure but I don't recall that it explicitly informs you that it is going to be using the 275GB of free space.

Or would it be safer to choose the "Something else" option and use option 2 or 3? If so which of option 2 or 3 is more likely to be successful?

If you don't trust the installer, 'Something Else' gives you total control of everything.
There are so many options that opinions on what might be better/safer/more likely to be successful will differ.

There are elements in both options 2 and 3 which I wouldn't do (though I believe both are viable).
This makes it difficult to recommend one over the other.

Sorry for the short reply - I had written a more detailed response but lost it when challenged to prove I am not a robot.

[me269]

Update: I selected "Something else" and created two partitions from the free space:
i) an 8 GB swap partition
ii) i set the rest of the free space to Ext4 with / as the mount point.

I left the default /dev/sda for the boot loader installation.

Following installation my laptop originally booted into windows. It was straightforward to change to the ubuntu grub bootloader in the UEFI settings. Everything seems to be working as it should be.

Massive thank you to stevef. Your feedback gave me the confidence to proceed with the installation.