How to dual boot?

[drakethelegend]

I see there are a few different options to dual boot such as the following:

Use Free Space
Shrink Current System
Replace Current Linux System

and I'm just not sure which one to do. I don't have Linux already installed on this computer, so I can't do the 3rd option, right? I have 500 GB's of free space available, so if I did the 1st option, would it use all of it? I'm thinking I should do Shrink Current System?

I want to dual boot Fedora 16 alongside my Windows 7, and give half the room to Fedora 16. (Would this be the best way?)

Thanks for any help, so excited to install!

---------- Post added at 10:21 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:19 AM ----------

Also, this might be a noob question, but how is ram allocated with this process? It's all devoted to whichever OS I boot into, right?

[markkuk]

Originally Posted by drakethelegend

I have 500 GB's of free space available, so if I did the 1st option, would it use all of it? I'm thinking I should do Shrink Current System?

If the "free space" is actually unused space on your Windows partition (or "drive" as it's misleadingly called in Windows), then "Shrink Current System" is the only possible option.

Originally Posted by drakethelegend

Also, this might be a noob question, but how is ram allocated with this process? It's all devoted to whichever OS I boot into, right?

Right.

[drakethelegend]

Hmm... I still seem to be having problems on my HP Pavilion dm4. It's 64 bit, and I installed the 64 bit iso to my USB and CD-ROM. I tried the USB on my old Gateway, and it worked fine. But I wanna install it on this one too... any ideas why the CD-ROM or USB won't work on this laptop?

When I boot from either, they both go to the 'booting to Fedora in 10 seconds' or whatever, but after that I hear a lot of humming from my laptop and just a black screen that doesn't go away.