[SOLVED] Replace partial Mint installation

Question

SHORT VERSION: Friend has a hard drive with an Arch partition and a Mint partition. He wants to safely remove the Mint partition and dedicate the hard drive to Arch.
FULL STORY: I have a friend who's a complete newbie to Linux, but he saw my Arch setup and was really impressed. We got him set up that day (bought an external hard disk specifically for it). After a few weeks of being tech support for basic issues, I personally decided that something a little more beginner-friendly (like Mint or Ubuntu) would be more his speed. So, I burned a DVD with Mint 15 on it, and we installed it. Installation went fine, but we found some issues, and he decided he wants to remove it because of these issues (and I don't blame him).
PROBLEMS WITH MINT (may not be fully relevant): His screen resolution is out of proportion and no options exist to fix it (he can change resolutions, but not to a 16:9 res). There is some immense lag at times, and the software center is nearly useless (software just doesn't install). I think the root of the problem with his screen res is the fact that we installed it while mirroring his video with an HDMI cable to his television, but I'll probably need to consult the Mint forums about these issues.
WHY I CAME HERE FIRST (relevant): We used gParted to cut the Arch partition in half, then used Mint's graphical installer to install Mint on the remaining free space. This all worked fine, but I do know that Mint's installer does install GRUB (which we had already installed when we installed Arch the first time). If we just delete the Mint partition and grow Arch over it, how will that affect the new GRUB install, and/or will it break it? I also don't have his partition table in front of me, so I'm not sure if Mint also created its own swap partition even though we made one when installing Arch. If it did, what needs to be done about it.
ABOUT GRUB: His new GRUB boot screen has definitely been altered. Not only does it show Mint 15 and Arch, it also shows Windows 8 (which is sitting on his main hard disk). Was GRUB installed on the main disk, or did Mint just get smart when installing GRUB and pick up the Windows installation on the other drive?
I might come back with more questions if need be. For now, I'll also be opening a thread on the Mint forums about his issues, but I do believe these forums would be the best place to ask about replacing the OS.
Thanks in advance.
Last edited by 2mac (2014-01-04 19:33:25)

Answer 1

Bollocks! There is no right choice. The average user needs to spend money on IT people (like me), because that super easy OS of theirs is too complicated to administer without proper knowledge. Back in the day, when we were still banging rocks together, there was no easy distribution, even DOS was impossible to configure without a rocket science degree. The only wrong choice is to ask questions without presenting research.
Yes, OP, I cannot see a question. What did you do and what did not work? What reasearch have you been doing so far? Look at the steps you performed: You split the Arch partition and installed Mint on the new, free half. I'd frist start by reading the GRUB wiki page here and make sure Arch is the one to install GRUB. Then I would undo the partition split. I would also keep an Arch install medium and the chroot wiki article ready.