This is the latest in a series of tutorials that has been published on this site on how to dual-boot Windows 7 and Linux distributions. Previous articles published on this subject are how to dual-boot Fedora 14 and Windows 7 and how to dual-boot Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7. This article presents a step by step guide on how to dual-boot Linux Mint 10 and Windows 7.

How to dual-boot Fedora 14 and Windows 7 is next in a series of articles on dual-booting Windows and Linux distributions. The first was how to dual boot Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7. That article gave detailed instructions on how to dual-boot, with GRUB installed on the MBR of the hard disk.

The dual-boot system will be on a single hard disk drive (HDD), GRUB will be installed in Fedora’s boot partition, and Truecrypt will be used to encrypt the Windows 7 end of the installation.

No distribution’s installer makes setting up disk encryption as easy as Anaconda, the Fedora system installer. And that has not changed in Fedora 16, the latest stable release. On previous versions of Fedora, those released before Fedora 16, the only automated disk partitioning option was one based on LVM, the Linux Logical Volume Manager.

How to dual-boot Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04 on a computer with one hard disk is the subject of this tutorial. If you have ever configured dual-booting between Windows and a Linux distribution, the steps involved should be very familiar, but if you have not, this tutorial is detailed enough that you should not have any problems in setting this up on your computer – laptop or desktop.

UNetbootin is a tool that allows you to install various Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSuSE, Debian, ArchLinux) from a Windows or a Linux desktop over the internet (i.e., you don't need to burn the Ubuntu, Fedora, ... CDs). Unlike the Ubuntu installation with Wubi, real partitions are created during the installation.

The first two articles on dual-booting Windows 7 and Linux distributions published here involved installation on a computer with a single hard drive. Those articles on dual-booting Fedora 14 and Ubuntu 10.10 with Windows 7 are available here and here. This article will cover a different use-case, dual-booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.10 or Linux Mint 10 on a computer with two hard drives.

Anaconda, the Fedora system installer, is probably the best installation program available on any Linux or BSD distribution, and the version that comes with Fedora 16, version 16.25, has a couple of visible enhancements that make it even better. One of those enhancements is support for GPT disk partitions.

Fedora 14 is the latest update to the Red Hat-sponsored, Linux distribution. It is one of a handful of Linux distributions that use LVM, the Linux Logical Volume Manager, as the default disk partitioning scheme. The installer creates three logical volumes by default, besides the non-LVM /boot partition.