Manually configure your drive for dual-booting

1 Launch GParted

Boot your Mint install media. When the desktop appears, click the ‘Menu’ button in the bottom left-hand corner and in the Search box type ‘GParted’. Click the GParted entry when it appears to launch it. Verify your Windows drive is selected (/ dev/sda) – you should see at least two partitions, the largest of which is your Windows partition. Right-click this and choose Resize/Move.

4 Set up Linux partition

Select the free space and click the ‘+’ button again. This time, set the partition size to 12000MB (12GB), leave ‘Logical’, ‘Beginning of this space’ and ‘Ext4 journaling file system’ selected. Click the ‘Mount point:’ drop-down menu and choose ‘/’ to make it the main partition for Ubuntu to reside on (if you have plenty of free space, make it bigger). Click ‘OK’ again.

2 Free up space for Linux

Click on the right-hand slider and drag it left to free up enough space for your Ubuntu install – leave at least 10GB free space for Windows. Once done, click ‘Resize/Move’ followed by the ‘Apply all operations’ button, selecting ‘Apply’ when prompted. Wait for the partitioning to complete, then click ‘Close’. Double-click the ‘Install Linux Mint’ shortcut. Select ‘English’ and click ‘Continue’.

5 Create home partition

Select the remaining free space and click ‘+’ again. Leave everything as it is, except the mount point, which you should point to / home before clicking ‘OK’. The /home directory is where everyone’s personal files and settings – including documents, pictures and programs – are stored, so make sure it’s the biggest partition of the three. Once done, review your changes.

3 Start partitioning

Leave both boxes ticked and click ‘Continue’. Select ‘Something else’ under ‘Installation type’ and click ‘Continue’. Select the free space under /dev/sda and click the ‘+’ button to set up your first partition. Set the size to 4096MB, leave Logical selected for the partition type, but select ‘End of this space’. Click the ‘Use as:’ drop-down menu and choose ‘swap area’ and click ‘OK’.

6 Set boot partition

If you need to set up your partitions again, select each of the new Linux partitions in turn and click – to remove them, then return to step three. The ‘Device for boot loader installation’ drop-down menu should point to your drive (/ dev/sda), so verify this is the case before clicking ‘Install Now’. Review your chosen partition settings and click ‘Continue’ to apply them and install Mint.