How to make room for an additional distro

[Pongo Pan]

On Thu, 2012-09-13 at 23:14 +0200, John D. Herron wrote:
> Hi, all.
> 
> I'm running a Windows-free Intel 32-bit machine with Ubuntu 12.04
> preinstalled on a 1 TB harddisk in a single partition which seems to
> span the entire HDD, although at this time it occupies only about 25
> GB of space.
> Would like to install and dual-boot the latest Linux Mint alongside
> with the Ubuntu.
> How do I go about doing that without ruining the original Ubuntu
> content? 
> Thanks for helping out.
> 
> jdh
> 

Install gparted, the Gnome partitioner, and shrink the primary partition
you have now (may take a long time: run this overnight) and then add an
extended partition in which you can make as many logical partitions for
more distros as you like.

You might like to look into Parted Magic, a free live CD that bundles
gparted with much else: partedmagic.com.  I find I have fewer problems
moving partitions around and resizing them if I use a live CD.  Parted
Magic also runs a forum which is a good source for info and advice on
partitioning in general.

Please post in plain text here.

-- 
pongo pan
Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:47:25 -0700
Epicurus up 1:48, 2 users, load average: 0.09, 0.17, 0.25
Linux 3.2.0-30-generic
Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS, gnome-session 3.2.1, unity 5.14.0