Dual boot Ubuntu and Vista with Vista already installed

Dual-boot systems have historically, for me anyway, been a pain to set up. Vista and Ubuntu make it pretty easy.

Now, you can use Virtual PC to run Linux, but if you want to see how it directly works (or not) with your hardware you really need to install the OS as a primary system.

So, Vista has a cool feature. It lets you resize your C: drive partition, thus freeing up space with which to install another operating system.

1. Right-click "My Computer", and choose Manage
2. Select "Disk Management" under Storage
3. Right-click the C: partition, and choose Shrink Volume (yeah!)
4. It will query for "available shrink space" and tell you how much you can get
5. Click the shrink button when the numbers are what you want them to be

Now, when you boot Ubuntu from a thumbdrive or CD, one of the partitioning options is to "use the largest contiguous space" or something like that. It installs in that partition, then installs Grub in the Master Boot Record so you have your dual-boot.

This is so cool.