GJB wrote:
Several questions arise: i) can I adjust the partitions of the hardrive to shrink the current root (/), create a new partion to install the Xubunutu on and set-up GRUB bootloader to give me a choice of which system to boot from? Is the best tool to do this fdisk or is there something else out now?
Yes you can. Last time I checked fdisk couldn't resize partitions without data loss. There is a chance that the Xubuntu installer can do it, but I can't remember. Your best shot is to use a tool like gnuparted via a cd like sysresccd (http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page) to do the resizing and create the new partition and then just point the Xubuntu installer at the blank partition.
ii) will I risk losing any of the current data in "/"? (As always will do a full system back-up first but what's the chances?)
Provided you have adequate free space on / I believe the operation is relatively safe. But it is a fairly fundamental change so it would definitely be advisable to have a good backup (and check that the backup is valid after making it...).
iii) will the systems need separate swap drive partitions or will Xubunutu recognise the current swap partition set-up? (No idea if or where config for this would be)
They can share a single swap partition.
iv) can i also partition a new section for to mount the current /home that both systems will then recognise as the new /home? (Just mount table config here I'm picking)
In general yes. However sharing /home between different distributions is not always a good idea. Applications store settings in dotfiles (.mozilla, .gnome, etc) in your home directory and if you have different versions of the application in each operating system they can get very very confused. Cheers -- Matt Brown matt(a)mattb.net.nz Mob +64 21 611 544 www.mattb.net.nz