I said I would post my experience of installing Linux Mint as a dual-boot with Windows XP so here goes:
I read a few sites documenting how to do it. This was the most useful.
http://www.freeyourselffrommicrosoftandthensa.org/06-dual-boot/6-3-dual-boot-linux-mint-with-windows-xp-or-windows-7I have a desktop system with one 500 GB hard disk. It was partitioned into two primary partitions, one of 50GB which was the C drive and the rest (450GB) as the E drive. To install Linux I needed to create some unallocated space on the disk. First I made sure I had everything on E backed up to an external USB hard disk.
I also used Macrium Reflect
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx to make an image of the C drive again onto the external disk and a also rescue CD that I could boot from if things went wrong (I said I was cautious).
Download Gparted Live from
http://gparted.org/download.phpThe link to click is "Download gparted-live-0.18.0-2-i486.iso" Beware of all the Download buttons on the page which are adverts for other software.
Burn image to CD.
Then I used a Gparted Live CD to boot from and shrink the second partition from 450GB to 250GB. This left me 200GB of unallocated space that could be used for the Linux install. I booted back into Windows to check that the resize hadn't corrupted the disk.
Next I booted from the Linux Mint DVD and after it has loaded the desktop double-click the 'Install' icon. When I got to the screen asking how I wanted to install it I selected 'Something else' at the bottom of the list. This allowed me to choose the partitions that will be created. I created four logical partitions as follows:
name size partition type
Boot /boot 1GB /dev/sda5 ext4
Root / 30GB /dev/sda6 ext4
Swap 2GB /dev/sda7 swap
Home /home 167GB /dev/sda8 ext4
I chose to place the bootloader on sda, which means that Linux's GRUB boot manager will replace the Windows one. From the reading I'd done this seems more reliable and easier than modifying the Windows boot manager to dual-boot.
When the installation has finished it asks you to reboot. Take out the Linux DVD and reboot.
Now I've just got to learn to use it.
Hope someone finds this useful. There are many pitfalls so don't expect me to sort them out for you.
Gary