I have always been interested in learning Linux but aside from some side reading, have no real world experience with it so pardon me as I know my questions pertain to a situation in which I am getting wildly ahead of myself! I thought about running Linux as live boot from an external 1TB HDD I have but I'd prefer to be fully immersed to help speed up the learning curve and would like to maintain persistence. I'm currently in a unique position in that I have a new computer (desktop) and considering everything I've read up to this moment highly suggests creating multiple backups or starting with a 'clean' computer, thought it would be an ideal time to set up a partition for a dual boot (Win10 with distro TBD) before I start personalizing the desktop with my current go-to programs. Partitioning is where it starts to get a little tricky for me though because some of the guides I've read for getting started with a dual boot sys state I need to partition the drive myself(forum I got to that conclusion from) while I've read others which lead me to think as long as windows is installed first, the Linux distro will resize it accordingly (referenced article).

Currently my Disk Management shows:
Volume - Status - Capacity - Free Space
(Disk 1 partition 1) - Healthy (EFI Syst Partition) 650 MB - 650 MB
(Disk 1 partition 4) - Healthy (Recovery Partition) 456 MB - 456 MB
(Disk 1 partition 5) - Healthy (Recovery Partition) 12.08 GB - 12.08 GB
(Disk 1 partition 6) - Healthy (Recovery Partition) 1.06 GB - 1.06 GB
DATA D: - Healthy (Primary Partition) 1862.89 GB - 1862.66 GB
OS C: - Healthy (Boot...etc,Primary) 462.57 GB - 413.48 GB

*Note: All Layouts: Normal - All Types: Basic - File System for D: and C: are NTFS

Given that info, should I make a new partition if planning to install KDE Neon or Ubuntu Gnome or are any of those okay to use despite being Recovery partitions? I plan on using this computer for Steam and media editing so more room with the Win10 would be ideal so I can re-install my editing software and projects. Another source mentioned that when possible it might be safer to just install on a separate HDD all together. My computer currently supports these hard drive options:

Interface - SATA 6 Gbps
Solid-state drive (SSD) - (1) M.2 drive
U.2 drive - (1) U.2 drive
Hard drive - (1) 3.5-inch drive bay & (2) 2.5-inch drive bays
Capacity - Hard drive: Up to 4 TB
...........U.2 drive: Up to 960 GB
...........SSD: Up to 1 TB

However, if I could make do with what I have, that would be an ideal scenario. I know that's a lot of information, hopefully it's sufficient to get some feedback... I feel like I've read a million articles on the subject and I just keep going in circles. Thanks in advance for any pointers!

Hello and welcome to LQ.

You almost can't mention a few of the clue words you have like better and safer and get a real good answer.

Safe could be to run a free virtual machine I'd think.

Making a backup and recovery plan and testing it for windows would be safe.

Other than that, I personally have messed up a few installs by making almost every mistake possible in the past.

When I want to be safe, I remove data/power from internal drives and then install to secondary media. So far that has not messed up my systems. .... yet.

1 members found this post helpful.

That was certainly possible and is generally referred to as a 'frugal install'. The software unetbootin was capable of doing that, at least with legacy machines but I'm not sure it would work with UEFI and I would not recommend it for someone new.

You make reference to 'persistence' which is possible with 'some' Linux distributions (certainly UBUNTU). You can create a persistent install of Ubuntu on a flash drive with a persistent casper partition of any size, limited only by the size of the drive. Given the size of flash drives and their current low cost, it would probably be simpler to do a full install to a flash drive.

Certainly, if you have any data that is important to you, you would need to back it up before you start modifying partitions.

It would be best to use windows Disk Management tool to create free/unallocated space on the drive on which to install your Linux. You will need to format it with a Linux filesystem for it to work and you cannot do that with a default windows system.

Your partition information doesn't make sense to me. My understanding is that windows counts physical Disks from zero (0) yet your ouput shows Disk1 with an EFI partition. Might that be another internal drive? You don't indicate which drive C and D are on?

You mentioned using Ubuntu so I would suggest that you read the Ubuntu documentation below as you have windows 10 UEFI. It has details about installing dual boot with windows UEFI as well as some general principles.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

1 members found this post helpful.

Depending on how much space on your HDD Windows is taking up you may have to 'shrink your Windows partition' first before you can install Linux.

To do that go into Disk Management.

Read the installation documentation to help you with the install process. During the install the partition manager will prompt you to make partitions.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5iFE6zBHPE

Linux Mint is the easiest IMO to install if you would like to consider it over Ubuntu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qboX2iv4a3g

-::-With a UEFI machine you will have to disable the secure boot and the quick boot 'before' the Linux install. That can be done by looking in the BIOS under boot.-::-

1 members found this post helpful.

There always comes a time to stop reading and start doing. Just back up anything important.

New PC generally means warranty. Needing to use the warranty is a potential problem when multibooting. I suggest either using Windows' create installation media utility that's built into it, or secure a copy of installation media for your PC. Then, remove the OEM HD, install a different HD, and start from scratch, totally immersing yourself in learning Linux (and Windows) installation. With the new disk installed, use whichever partitioner you prefer to create a complete partitioning plan for however many operating systems you expect to wind up with. If a warranty situation comes up, put the OEM disk in until the problem is cleared, then return to business as usual with the disk you configured yourself.

All my 30+ operational systems are multiboot, with installed OS count averaging well in excess of 12. The few that use more than one disk do not have Windows installed on them (with one exception, all my multi-disk systems use them for RAID). I can't remember the last time I installed Windows before something else, probably sometime last century. It simply isn't necessary, no matter how many times or places you read otherwise. What makes it work for me is:

1-I fully partition to the needs of at least 6 or 8 operating systems in advance of installing anything, usually keeping at least half the disk in freespace, with 3 ordinary and very modest sized primaries (no more than 1GB combined) before creating the first logical (when not using GPT/UEFI).
2-Not one MBR PC has Grub on any MBR. All using MBR initialize boot using Windows-compatible MBR code and a boot flag on a primary.
3-Except when using UEFI, no distro is permitted to install Grub anywhere except on its root partition. If this option is not offered by its installer, no bootloader is installed specifically for it.
4-I manually install, setup and manage Grub on a primary partition, which can either load each installed Linux directly, chainload (as for Windows, whose system partition is always on a logical, and gets no more than a few hundred MB on a primary for its boot files), or use a configfile on the selected distro's root.
5-I create only one Linux swap partition, assign it a LABEL (for use by every fstab), and disallow mounting it by any Linux installer that insists swap needs to be formatted. I add swap to /etc/fstab myself post-installation for these latter cases (all Debians I've been exposed to). Thus, whichever Linux is booted uses that one swap partition.
6-Until you gain experience, I suggest each Linux distro after the first installed use a directory on its root for /home. Use a separate /home partition created for the first installed distro as a data partition for the others, adding it as a subdirectory under either /home/ or /home/<firstuser>/.
7-When Windows needs "special" power (major updates, or installation), I move the boot flag to Windows' primary, let Windows do its thing, then put it back at my convenience.

You could skip the "manually install and manage" bootloader step I use by installing your first Linux distro by making one of the primaries a separate partition for its /boot, putting off learning to manage for some future time when you're ready to devote time to that activity only. When updates are installed to that distro that includes updating Grub, Grub will normally find other installed systems and put them in its menu. That process can be instigated manually at any time after adding another Linux installation, or Windows. When using generic MBR code, whichever primary has the boot flag has control over booting. Thus, any time that flag gets moved, purposely or otherwise, it's a simple process to put it back like it was.

At some point after gaining substantial experience you may want to do another startover from scratch that utilizes LVM and/or RAID or both. That may well be after the warranty has expired, and a good time to put the OEM disk back into service, possibly as a second installed disk.

One further recommendation: whichever Linux you choose to be your first, use the EXT4 filesystem type for its root (/). BTRFS is the default for at least one top ten distro. BTRFS can turn out to be a booby trap for the inexperienced user, particularly in a multiboot environment. Multiboot is complicated enough without learning the quirks of BTRFS too. BTRFS may well be the future, but don't let it make multibooter you its guinea pig.

2 members found this post helpful.