Suggestions taken - and will be put into practice immediately.

But, how/when to I exercise the option to put /home in a separate partition? And make sure that the option to format /home is not selected?

When you do an install of Mint you will see a screen giving two options:

1: Erase Disk and install linux Mint
or
2: Something else

Choose Something else

On the next screen you'll see a list of available storage devices Select your hard drive, and delete all partitions. This will delete everything on the hard drive.

Then you will will want to create partitions for the system. Personally, I make a 512MB /boot partition, a 30GB /root partition, and use the rest of the space for the /home partition, where the majority of data is generally stored.

Then, in the future when you want to upgrade, after selecting Something else, you should NOT need to delete partitions again, just make sure you highlight your /home partition and click the "Change" button, and make sure sure that "Format the partition" is UNchecked. Then go ahead and install.

Thanks for this!

So, after I have deleted everything on the hard drive, I will see a screen that enables me to create the partitions you mention - /boot, /root, and /home - and allow me to choose their sizes???

Alok - One correction - When Ezekiel was referring to the "root" partition, he meant "/", not "/root".

"/" is the main system partition, analogous to C:\ on Windows. "/root" is the "home" directory for the user named "root" - the superuser analagous to "Administrator" in Windows. The "/root" directory will be created automatically without you having to specify anything.

If you choose the install method Ezekiel suggests, you will be specifying sizes for:

• /boot
• /
• ... and /home

Cheers - don't hesitate if anything.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks! I'm still nerving myself up to do the "permanent" install!

lol ... Don't sweat it. Worst case, if something goes wrong (with Mint, it probably won't), since you've backed up your data and important stuff, you can just scrap it all and start over :-)

Plow on ! It's a learning experience - enjoy it. Soon, you'll be the person giving advice to others here ...

Cheers !

Thanks! Worst case - it's keeping the Alzheimer's at bay...

!

Yes, yes. Thank you for catching that. I meant to put a space between the "/" and the "root" as that is a very significant difference.

It should be on the same screen that you delete the current partitions from. I just ran an install in a vm on my current system and this was done from the same screen.


EDIT: Again, note there is a significant difference between "/root" and "/" (root)

Cheers !

After I got to the screen that allowed me to choose "Something else", I came to a screen that was both busy and complicated - and had unfamiliar things like /dev/sda etc - sitting there waiting to be attended to. Beyond me! So I chickened out, and went back to the earlier screen and chose the erase and install option. Maybe next time. Meanwhile, thanks for the help - even if I wasn't man enough to take advantage of all of it.

lol ! Don't beat yourself up. You'll be fine with that option. All of your linux system will simply be on one single partition, with a separate partition for swap. This is still the way I install all my linux systems, except for servers. You just have to be mindful of what you want to save from /home if you ever have to reinstall or perform a major upgrade.

Let us know how things go ! And above all, enjoy the experience - have fun !!

Cheers.

No end to adventure!

I completed the install, and opted for automatic startup - but was required to opt for a password anyway.

Now, when I try and boot up, both automatically, and with the opted password, I get a prompt saying "invalid password"!

Is there a way around this difficulty?

Oops ! Not sure I understand the problem. Here's what I think I understand ... :

• Mint asked you to choose between NOT needing a password to log in or choosing a password ...
• You chose to log in automatically
• Mint asked you to choose a password anyway
• You chose a password
• You try to log in with the above password and Mint responds "invalid password"

... Is that right ?

When you try logging in is it under your own user name or root ?

Have you tried leaving the password field blank ?

... I'm a bit baffled here, I admit. I don't often use Mint and certainly never ran into a situation like this. That said, I always create a user account and password for best practices reasons ...

Get back with the answers to the above questions, anyway, and we'll see from there.

As you say - The Adventure Begins !!!