Do you want to install Ubuntu or Fedora without running installation CDs? You can do it with UNetbootin and this blog post tells you how to do it. Recently I installed an Ubuntu version and started installing it but as soon as it asked me to partition my hard disk I cancelled the installation because I didn’t want to lose my current installations. Although I could have taken the backups, but these days, due to lack of time and inclination, I only use new software and platforms if I really need them for work. Testing new things just for the heck of it doesn’t appeal to me these days.
Nonetheless, I dropped an Ubuntu installation-based question on another forum and got this useful reply
Many Linux distros (including Ubuntu) are “Live Discs”, meaning that you can run them directly from your CD/DVD drive; you do not have to install them prior to taking them for a ‘test drive’ and they will not touch you hard drive under normal circumstances (i.e., you do not attempt to open the drive).
It’s been a while since I used Ubuntu (I am not a big fan of Gnome), so I do not recall whether or not it includes a tool capable of partitioning your existing partitions (ala “Partition Magic”), but many others (such as my personal favorite, and current resident on my two laptops, SimplyMEPIS) do.
It is a simple matter to select the Windows partition, slide the bar over, and re-size the partition. Don’t forget that Linux generally needs at least *two* partitions: a main partition (generally either “ext2? or “ext3?) and a “swap” partition (generally at least equal to your system RAM in size).
One other thing: Linux names the partitions on IDE drives as “hda1?”, “hda2?”, etc., where “hda1?” is the first partition (’1?’) on the first drive (‘a’). If/When you decide to actually install any flavor of Linux, be careful not to install Linux onto ‘hda1?’ (often the default, but which, in all likelihood, is the previously resized FAT32/NTFS partition), presuming, of course, that you do not intend to go “cold-turkey” and instead desire to dual-boot with your legacy OS…
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