Windows XP
Dell Dimension 4600
I don't know MBP nor EFI
MBR- Master Boot Record- only allows up to four bootable partitions.
Efi- uyp to Four Bootable- more than four sub partitions- can be more than four bootable partitions if using with GPT (Guid Partition Table).
Win XP did not have Fast boot. You may have secure boot in your BIOS settings- might check that to be sure. But If Win XP, Dell Dimension- I suspect no secure boot and MBR, not EFI.
2 gigs is way too small, You need at least ten gigs minimum and even that would fill up faster than Donald Trumps wallet at an RNC convention.
Have you tried using Antix or Puppy Linux?
How do others have a dual boot with Zorin if the number of bootable partitions is limited to four as Zorin needs at least 3 partitions if my understanding is correct?
I misspoke the size. It is 20G instead. I have tried quite a few distros for the old PC including Antix. Some of them are too hard to install/setup.
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Zorin OS only needs One Partition. It is possible to install it using different partitions and some prefer to, in order to preserve Home in case of reinstall later. You can use two partitions, with HOME installed on one and Root installed on the other.
I always use one partition and use back ups to preserve my data.
On your image, I see three partitions- one is unknown and labeled Swap (Swap should be on same partition), one is formatted to FAT 16.
Is this a 32bit OS?
Glad you clarified root 20G as per your screenshot, not 2GB, which would be too small.
On my XP Z15.3Core dual-boot, I have XP in one partition, then a second extended partition (sda2) containing linux-swap (sda5), root (sda6), and home (sda7).
Thanks for your info.
In my previous dual boot installations, there were four partitions in total. Windows uses two of them and Linux uses another two and one for swap. Now, it seems that Zorin needs an additional partition for the home. For a total of four partitions, that runs into a wall.
You are right.. The Dell desktop is 32-bit.
If my understanding is correct, your Zorin installation only uses one partition. If so, how did you install it?
I use the "Something Else method.
You may wish to download a copy of @swarfendor437 's Unofficial Manual for Z15. here: Unofficial Manual for Zorin 15
Actually, when I came to install Zorin 12 Core way back, I followed this thread by Wolfman, which is still on the old forum archive here: How to use Gparted to dual boot with Windows/ Linux - Old Zorin Forum archive
Undoubtedly MBR. Limited number of bootable partitions.
Note. I have hunted down an old archive thread and done an edit to my post above.
Depending on the amount of ram you're system has, and that a portion of the root partition will be used if you don't specify one, skip swap partition. Zorin root partition and windows will be two bootable partitions. You can have another, /home partition, not bootable... which reduces the need for a large root (configuration files, downloads, Customizations, documents) all stored here. You are not limited to 4 partitions. Your limit is 4 bootable. You confuse home for a bootable... it's not
That is to have an extended partition. Someone mentioned it to me today. That is some work of using Gparted.
The PC has 3G ram. It already has a swap partition from previous Linux installation. I assume it can be used for Zorin as well. I don't quite follow your first sentence. How can I use the "unusable" for /home?
In gparted, during install, you will have the windows partition, which hopefully you already resized and isn't the entire drive... you're first bootable partition. The rear of the space has to be separately partitioned, another bootable for the root ( / ). All your bootable partitions are configured. The existing swap partition can be mounted on /swap, and the remaining space can be formatted and mounted as /home. The only part of a drive that is usually unusable is the beginning, containing the boot records and partitioning table. You can remove the old swap partition (delete it) and add that to what you'll use for your home partition. That's a decision you have to make.
You could also delete all but the windows partition and create one big root partition and it will house everything (home, swap and root). If you ever reinstall a different or newer distro you lose all your customizations. That's why people use separate home partitions.
I hope that clears things up. Without knowing how many physical drives, sizes of the drives and current partitions, there really isn't anything more specific to tell you. Partitioning is also a design choice for your system, something you need to choose.
Thanks for your information. That, however, is too complicated for me. I just want to learn how to make the unusable dish space for the /home. The screenshot shows the entire hard drive situation: one drive with 120 GB. I don't want to touch the existing Windows installation at all. It isn't easy to get new Windows XP working properly nowadays. I have to deal with service packages and drivers. Too time-consuming.
The followings are two screenshots, one of an output of "fdisk -l" and Gparted.
Hope they can provide more current hard drive information.
If it was me... I would remove the swap. Installing zorin often will automatically create a swap file. Otherwise, creating or modifying a swap is very easy- about two or maybe three lines in a terminal.
Are you installing Zorin alongside of MX Linux? If not, I would delete the partition with the (-) button. Expand it into the unallocated space to make that one larger partition instead of two smaller ones.
I have resolved this issue by using Gparted coming with the Zorin Live OS. After creating logic partition under an extended partition, I am able to meet the Zorin installation guide with three partitions: "/", swap, and "/home"
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