Disk Allocation

Hello mkrk Welcome to the Ten Forums!

The main reason for the problem you are running into is simply put you have an HP OEM partitioning scheme with not only the Windows OS primary but..... the System Reserved, HP Recovery, and one other possible "Primary" mbr type partition which takes up the maximum 4th primary type. Fortunately most Linux distros can still be put on and run from extended volumes while the partition table entry Grub sees has to that become the "Mount /" as well as root if you can follow that.

Now for a full out "Do It Your Way" partitioning scheme that would require may as well say a new drive?! Or a total wipe of the factory partitioning in favor of a brand new single Windows primary without the System Reserved using GParted not any MS tools for the project. MiniTool however is another free partitioning program but needs Windows to run ruling that out as well as most other 3rd party programs unless they support Linux as well as MS partitioning.

With the Gnome Partition Editor you can create the new layout having the Windows larger Primary up front and even the second swap partition if wanted for the distro. With only 1tb of memory installed according to the System specs you provided in your profile an adequate swap partition is something to consider while most distros wouldn't see 1tb as not enough.

Your main problem however is the factory partitioning getting in the way. You are not able to do much resizing as well as having the recovery partition taking up space there. With GPT instead of MBR type partitioning that would allow for more primaries to be seen and often put to use on larger drives since the number of extended volumes also sees an increase. The 350-400mb mbr type 4th partition is what allows for the conversion from one format to the other. A general look at conversion from mbr to gpt in Windows can be looked over at http://www.thewindowsclub.com/convert-mbr-to-gpt-disk