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Originally Posted by meandsushil
four primary partitions means what? i installed two xp os on c: and d: and win7 on e: so is it called 3 primary partitions?
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Yes. That is three primary partitions.
The Linux partitioning tools would then let you create one more primary partition, which would be the wrong thing to do, or create one extended partition (using all the remaining space) and then create logical partitions inside the extended partition.
What distribution of Linux are you trying to install? Most beginners use some distribution that has a GUI partitioning tool available during the install process. Working with a GUI partitioning tool will make these things much easier to understand.
The
fdisk -l command suggested above is one way to look at the current partitioning so that an expert could tell you the commands needed to fix it, even using a non GUI partitioning tool.
If you do all the commands correctly (that are suggested after we see fdisk -l output), the whole process should not disturb the three Windows primary partitions. Backup first is a good idea because you might misunderstand instructions or maybe someone will misunderstand your situation and give you incorrect instructions.
But if you have gparted or other GUI partitioning tool available, that should let you figure it out with less detailed instructions from the forum.
Quote:
Originally Posted by meandsushil
or is it? "/", "/boot","/usr","swap" that i created during installation?
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"/" and "swap" should be logical partitions you create inside that extended partition.
There might be reasons to create "/boot" or "/home" or even "/usr" as more logical partitions. But it is simpler to skip that and make "/" big enough that "/boot", "/home" and "/usr" work well as directories inside "/".
If you don't understand a good reason to make any of those separate partitions, you probably don't have a good reason to do so.