Setting up a PC to run Linux/Fedora while keeping Windows install

Task 1 Prepare a USB drive with Fedora installation source

Why?

We need a media that contains Fedora on either CD/DVD or USB thumb drive. I chose USB drive since I have several old USB drives with smaller capacity sitting around at home.

How big should USB drive be?

Fedora 19 installation files is 951 MB. I used 2GB USB drive.

How do I "burn" Fedora installation image to USB drive?

You need to run a program called "USB Live Creator" which is available here.

Once you finish installing USB Live Creator, start the tool.

• Select an appropriate Fedora image from "Download Fedora" drop-down
• Insert your USB drive to your PC, and then select it at "Target Device" drop-down

(Press "Refresh" icon as necessary)

Once finished, you have an USB drive from which you can boot up a PC with Fedora.

Task 2 Parepare a USB drive with a partition tool

Why?

In order to keep your existing Windows OS, I need to free up my C: drive on my notebook computer.

I used a tool called Gnome Partition Editor (or Gparted for short). To use Gparted, you need to prepare a media with Gparted on it. I chose yet another USB thumb drive for that (but you can burn a CD too).

The size of Gparted is about 160MB. I have another 1GB USB drive that is used for anything useful at home (I bought this USB drive long time ago, paid $200 dollars back then, thinking it is a good investment! Now the price is so cheap that this is just a junk in my shoe box, but it now has some good use!)

How do I create a USB drive with Gparted?

I used a tool called "Tuxboot", which is available at SourceForge.

Once you download and lunch tuxboot,

• Select "gparted-live-stable" under "On-Line Distribution" drop-down box (try "gparted-live-testing" if something goes wrong. I had to do that)
• Select "USB Drive" at "Type:" drop-down.
• Select an appropriate drive pointing to your USB drive.

Task 3 Prepare your hard drive with free partition

How to reboot using Gparted?

• Shut down your PC
• Insert your USB drive into a USB socket
• Start your PC
• While the machine is starting up, hit F12 to go to boot menu (NOTE: this key depends on you machine. Carefully watch the initial screen and look for "Boot menu")

At the boot menu, choose USB drive from the list of boot device 

Then, let Gparted start. Provide answers to a series of simple questions. Eventually Gparted user interface shows up.

How to shrink the Windows partition to free up space

With Gparted user interface, you can easily shrink a partition: use mouse to re-size, or punch in a number. As for the size, I chose to simply cut my 500GB drive into half: one for Window and the other for Linux.

How to reserve a primary partition for /home directory (Optional)

You can have an independent partition to be mounted as /home directory so that whenever I need to re-install Linux, I don't lose my data and some applications.

I created a primary partition of 100GB in size. The remaining free space will be used for other part of Linux installation.

Note that this step is optional. If you don't care, just leave the half of the HDD as "free"..

Here is the final state of my C: drive before I quit Gparted.

When you are happy, shut down the machine, and un-plug your USB with Gparted on it.

Step 4 Install Fedora using the USB drive

We will be using the USB drive, which contains Fedora, we created earlier.

• Remove Gparted USB drive, if its still there
• Insert the USB drive with Fedora into an USB slot
• Restart your machine
• Hit F12 to go to boot menu, then select USB drive.
• Let Fedora OS to load.

Once Fedora is loaded from USB drive, you will see this choice. Choose "Install to Hard Drive"

Follow instructions. Everything is straightforward, except maybe the part where you configure disk storage.

How to mount my 100GB partition for /home directory

While configuring storage/partitions for Fedora install, I need to tell the install to use my 100GB partition to be mounted to /home

First, select a partition that corresponds to the 100GB partiion. In my case, it is listed as below.

Then, look at the right hand side pane. You can specify "/home" under "Mount Point:" field.

Configure other partitions

I followed information described in Fedora Recommended Partitioning Scheme to set up other major partitions such as /boo, root (/), swap, etc.

My final partitions look like this.

Complete Fedora installation

You need to at least provide a password for super user. Once done, just continue with the instructions.

You are done!