I've no experience with SUSE. I've only used CentOS in a server context -- and it seems to me like their software versions for installed packages (e.g., PHP or Apache) tend to be quite old. I'm an Ubuntu man myself and have a fair amount of experience with it on both servers and my workstation. I do most of my software dev work on Ubuntu 14.04 LT at the moment. It has been pretty straightforward if you ask me.

My workstation (on which I'm working as I type this) is a dual-boot windows 7 and Ubuntu 14 machine. Setting this kind of thing up is a lot easier if you have more than one hard drive OR if you already have multiple hard drive partitions set up in the first place.

Yep, you'll need a separate partition. I don't recall the exact scheme of partitions I use on this machine, but I do remember taking care to create separate partitions for W7 and Ubuntu in advance. If you only have one drive and it already has W10 on it, you will have to figure out how to shrink that partition and create new, separate partitions on it. If I remember correctly, you'll need an empty partition for Ubuntu's system drive and another empty partition for the memory swap space. Ubuntu's system requirements are quite modest, but I would NOT recommend trying to operate with the minimum values listed. Ubuntu has helpful information about installing which you may find useful. For example:
I would suggest using W10 to try and shrink shrink your primary partition where W10 is installed and free up about half of its space for Ubuntu if you can.

It sort of parks itself alongside windows. You have to install windows first for multi boot setup because the windows installer won't play nearly as nice as Ubuntu does. The Ubuntu installer has pretty easy-to-use tools to manage partitions before you begin installation.

Th page I linked above looks pretty basic.

1 members found this post helpful.

I'd think it's safer to find out from windblow$ attempting to shrink it, rather than a GNU\Linux* installer.

Though even safer IMHO, to ditch all non-GPLs...

I agree that it would be safer for your windows installation to let windows resize the partition where you've installed it. Depending on the install configuration, there might be a second partition for system backups or something -- this was the default on an ASUS netbook I purchased.

Just go to >Disk Management and right click on the partition to be modified and select shrink and type in; in megabytes how much you'd like to shrink the partition-
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...windows-vista/

Worked for me in Windows 7-

Sneakyimp

Good point. I thought about bringing that up in my first post as the manufacturer may have it covered. Tho could still back that up too, 10 is not "free" any longer. LL

When I got this laptop I gave 7-upgraded to 10 a go, until I could not take it anymore. Also, looks the same method for 8's and vi$ta.

SpaceDonkey,

I still think the safest way is to take out the hard drive, assuming it is not a solid state affair (SDD) and installing Linux on fresh drive- you can get a second hand one for 5 or 10 pounds. This is also assuming you don't have UEFI and, since you started with win7, I doubt you have.

Some people are reluctant to employ screwdrivers but sometimes things like HDD's only 2 screws away! Some models even have symbols on them to indicate what access you have.

Fred.

Save Your Forehead!

Don't(!) "dual boot!!"

Instead, install VirtualBox! Then, within the virtual machine(!) ... or machines ... thus created, install the Linux distro of your choice.

"Virtual-machine technology, today," is both highly-achievable and extremely efficient. There is, IMHO, no compelling reason anymore to resort to "dual booting."

+1 for VMs and: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...0/#post5546659 not to mention if you're low on RAM...

Space Donkey:

Have you been able to decide on a Virtual Machine, install a new HDD or dual boot?

Any decision on which distribution you'd like to install?
https://www.opensuse.org/
https://www.centos.org/download/