Installing Mint on an Upgrade Bos with Win 10 (inactive) installed

unclerichard · 08-18-2018, 03:48 PM

I ordered an upgrade box without an OS. It arrived with an inactive Win 10 installed. The vendor (retailer) is being obtuse and uncooperative. I have Mint 19 on a flash drive and can boot from this. The box has a 120GB SSD and a 1T HD.Can I - using the Mint installer - overwrite the Win 10? My idea was to put / on the SSD and Home on the HD. The SSD has a lot of partitions (recovery,hidden etc. Will these partitions be automatically deleted? Will mounting / on the SSD place root there? Do I need a swap partition who does Mint now use a swap file? Any suggestions, gotchas, advice welcome. Thanks in advance.

Keruskerfuerst · 08-19-2018, 01:54 AM

You should delete the existing partitions on the SSD/HDD with the installer or Gparted.

How many RAM does the computer have? If much RAM (like 32 GB) is installed, then no swap is needed (if it is a Desktop computer).

You need some partitions:
1. /boot/efi
2. /boot
3. / (root)
4. /home

yancek · 08-19-2018, 08:06 AM

If you don't want windows, Mint should have an option to Erase Disk and install Mint. This should overwrite the partitions for windows. If there is a windows 10 system, it is most likely UEFI so don't delete the EFI partition. If you do, I expect you would then need to re-create it for a Mint UEFI install. Some very basic info at the Mint site from the link below:

https://linuxmint-installation-guide...atest/efi.html

unclerichard · 08-19-2018, 01:24 PM

Thanks for you prompt replies. It has 8GB so I will need a swap partition: On the SSD or alongside Home on the HHD?
I understand the need to keep the boot/efi znd /Boot but can delete/forget about the Recovery and Hidden partitions?
Thanks for your time.

Keruskerfuerst · 08-19-2018, 02:30 PM

You can completly "clean" the existing discs - both SSD and HDD.
Then partition the discs for your needs.

syg00 · 08-19-2018, 06:23 PM

Partition it as you wish - all the current ones can go, although you might as well retain the EFI partition (the smallish FAT one). You will have to do manual partitioning in the installer to place swap and home on the real disk. Make sure you mount the EFI during that phase. No point in having a separate /boot on a UEFI system.

erik2282 · 08-21-2018, 01:46 PM

The recovery partition is a Windows partition that holds a small "image" and set of tools to restore your computer to factory settings. If you know you'll never need this, then go ahead and delete it.