I have a brand new laptop which came preinstalled with Windows 7. I'd like to dual-boot it with Fedora 16, and am wondering how to do so. I have installation media for both Windows 7 and Fedora 16, and can reformat the system in any way (because the laptop is brand new and doesn't have user data on it).

Is it better to start with Windows and then install Linux, or the other way around? Are both options even possible?

Also, let's say I start with Windows 7 and install Fedora 16 into the rest of my hard drive, how would I 'instruct' Windows 7 to give the option of booting into Linux on system startup?

And if starting with Windows 7 and resizing the partitions, how big should I resize it to? If I expect about 200GB of my data/applications on it, how big should I make it to accommodate Windows itself plus my files?

It seems like most of the instructions out there on dual-booting assume that you're starting with a system that you'd like to add another OS onto, but is there a simpler or better way to do it if I have the ability to add both OSs from scratch? So maybe setting all partitions when installing the first OS or something like that?

Wow I'm a bit confused about all this, but hopefully you can guide me in the right direction. Thanks.

you should be able to let fedora repartition the existing win7 system just fine during the install.

if you were to blow it all away, the only difference would be to leave some space unpartitioned for the later Linux install.

first install windows then linux second remember to live a partition for linux and its swap. it works just fine.

well swap can go in LVM, so no need for a disk partition there really, but either way, general blank space is useful certainly.

Leaving free space for Fedora when installing Windows isn't critical if you forget, the the Fedora installer will give you the option to resize (with a graphical slider bar, easy to understand) the existing partition, and install Fedora in the free space created..

Six of one, half a dozen of the other really.

Installers, Anaconda included, are asinine. The distro developers make incredibly stupid assumptions about how "their" baby will be installed. Maybe they should spend some time in the real world.

I always pre-allocate Linux partitions, but the suggestion of just leaving unallocated space also works. For Win7, I find it pays to use their disk management utility to shrink the Win7 partition. Then you don't spend 45mins going through NTFS verification next time you boot Win7. Prior to Win7 the Windoze tools weren't worth using. Note however it won't shrink to below 50% of the allocation - usually fine, else go get something like gparted.
By default F16 will install grub2 to the MBR and build boot entries for both. If you choose to keep the Win7 boot-loader, go get EasyBCD (a freebie) to add F16 to the Win7 boot menu.

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