One of the difficulties in migrating to Linux is the probable need to partition your hard drive if you want a dual-boot system. Since Microsoft doesn’t want to make it easy for you to escape Windows, you need to turn to third party software. Partition Magic is the best known, but I just tried out BootIt NG, which is a shareware package that does the trick rather nicely. It’s actually far more powerful than most people need – I don’t want a boot manager – I just needed to split one giant drive into two partitions.
Anyhow, it’s pretty easy to use, not very expensive, and I’ll post a how-to up here after I tackle the third machine’s drive.