On Wed, Jun 29, 2022 at 6:23 PM Robert McBroom via users <users@lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On 6/29/22 00:16, Michael Hennebry wrote:
> I recently acquired a
> Refurbished: Grade A Dell OptiPlex GX980 Tower PC, Intel Core I3-550
> 3.2Ghz, 8G DDR3, 1T HDD, DVD, VGA, WiFi, Bluetooth ...
> I can boot it from a live Centos 7 disk.
> According to W10, the HDD is partitioned as follows:
> System:   350 MB
> C:        930.44 GB
> recovery: 750 MB
>
> I think that I would want to dual-boot it (Windows/Fedora)
> in case I ever need Windows for something.
>
> I have set up dual booting before,
> but it has been a long time.
> Ideally it would be a triple boot:
> one for Windows, one that I just installed
> and one that I've been using lately.
> Mostly what I remember about the process is that getting the information
> from various distant places in the galaxy was a bit of a chore.

Do you plan to have the user "home" directory in a separate partition?
There have been glitches with configuration details stored in the
users home directory. One approach is to keep users "home" directories
separate but share Documents, etc. via a 4th partition.
 
>
> Can someone point me in the right direction?
>
Here is how I do the booting on a Dell Studio. The first step is to use
the windows disk management to shrink the C: partition. I forget whether
or not the Centos 7 Live disk has gparted on it or not. If not you can
install it to the image in memory for temporary use. Use gparted to
further reduce the C: drive to the size you expect to use with some
extra. Assuming from the vintage of the 980 that it is not an efi boot
system and that it is a Master Boot disk, make the rest of the free
space an extended partition. Put a 500 to 800MB partition in the
extended partition for your Linux boot as ext4. Additional partitions
can be made in the extended partition for whatever you want to do.

This is essentially what I have been doing for years, but Michael wants
two linux boot partitions.  He didn't mention if he wants these to share
a separate /home partition.  This method preserves the recovery partition,
which can have drivers that aren't in the original Windows installation
DVD images, but you may be able to get newer install images or
download drivers from the vendor's site.  A fresh install of current
Windows is generally better than trying to upgrade a years-old
recovery image.  I would do away with the recovery partition.

Using Windows tools to shrink the original partition has been
reliable for me.   With Windows 10 it was necessary to disable
"fastboot" as that just loads Windows without allowing the user
to choose another OS.
 
Things may be a bit tight.

In my experience, many users with 1TB drives were happy with
1/4 TB for Windows, a 1/8 TB linux "root" partition, and the
residual for /home.   The others generally need much more than 1TB,

The Fedora server install gives you the most freedom of specifying your
custom system structure the graphical interface you want to use can be
added with the groupinstall of dnf.

--
George N. White III