Will be installing either Mint or Pop_OS on a new laptop which has a 512gb SSD. Will keep Windows for gaming, at least for now, with the games installed on an external HD. But otherwise, this is to experiment with living in Linux.
I understand that I can unallocate HD space from Windows in order to make room for the LInux OS, leaving at least 25 or 30gb for the Linux OS itself.
Do I then extend that space further, so to speak, to allow for any other programs I might install as well as for data? Do I create a third partition for data that will be shared between the two OS?
What’s a reasonable breakdown?
e.g.
Windows 100gb; Linux 400gb or
Win 100gb; Linux 30gb; Data (NTFS) 370gb?
Many people do dual drives, but if you install linux second and it is a distro thay uses grub with probe foreign OS them you don’t really need two drives. make space on windows drive, in the linux installer create another boot partition, root and home. You set bios to boot Linux grub. Grub will launch and give you linux or choice to chainload to Windows. Windows is unaware it is getting kicked off by grub so the Windows and Lunux boot partitions leave each other alone. i can’t vouch for every distro letting you setup like this but this is how my OoenSUSE has been since 2017