Dual Boot question

steerpike

steerpike

steerpike

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Hi - my first post here....

I am in the process of getting a new system, and for various reasons want to build it as a dual boot ubuntu / windows x64 (i.e. win for games and linux for everything else).

I would describe myself as a pretty competant and confident computer user, though relatively un-informed on a more techy/software level.

What I want to know is this: does it make a difference what order I install the OS's in, and what impact does using the free distribution of Win x64 have on the system when it expires? (at the moment I can't afford to buy a full copy, that may come a couple of months down the line....)

Any thoughts or advice, I'd be grateful - cheers!
 
I think you will definitely have to put x64 on first and then GRUB from Ubuntu should pick it up. If you do it the other way, Windows will more than likely overwrite the Ubuntu loader completely.

When x64 expires, it expires. You will have to reinstall it with a full copy and then it will overwrite GRUB again!
 
all you need to do for partitioning is make a NTFS or FAT32 partition however many percent of the disk for windows, leaving enough for linux. Like 50% or 70%. Then install windows. Then when you come to installing ubuntu you can tell it to use the freespace. (makes it easier than manually doing the linux partitions)

You might want to leave a few gigs for a FAT32 partition so you can write to it in linux and windows or just stick with NTFS on read only. If you're not too worried about data loss you could try the NTFS read/write in linux, think it's still under beta/test tho so not sure how safe it is. I guess alternatively you could just use a USB Mass storage device for cross platform data access. (altho some of those seem to be NTFS)
 
mortals said:
all you need to do for partitioning is make a NTFS or FAT32 partition however many percent of the disk for windows, leaving enough for linux. Like 50% or 70%. Then install windows. Then when you come to QUOTE]

Right, this is where I display my ignorance! What is the diference between these two formats, and is this a function I can perform in BIOS before installing either OS? - Cheers
Click to expand...
 
steerpike said:
Right, this is where I display my ignorance! What is the diference between these two formats, and is this a function I can perform in BIOS before installing either OS? - Cheers
Click to expand...
I'm guessing you've never partitioned a drive before.

All you need is a boot disk with partition magic or similar. I still use my old win98se dos bootdisk which has ghost, partition magic etc included on it.

I think you can download a bootdisk from various places. Something like ultimate bootdisk would do it.

Or you could install windows as normal and resize the disk, altho I think that takes longer and requires partition magic :(

I've not yet tried windows x64, but there might be an option for partitioning a certain percentage of the disk on the installer.
 
Ubuntu comes with fdisk on the live cd/install console if memory serves.. though that is not for the faint hearted if you've never done any manual partitions before.

ubuntu also has a GUI partition app bundled with it.

Windows absolutely 100% will rewrite the MBR and set the only boot option to windows. MS don't want you to use other vendors software, they assume you will only want to use windows.. amongst all their other assumptions such as every user is deaf, dumb, and without limbs - hence all the crap that gets installed like 'Special Text Functions' and text-to-speech without you asking for it.

But I digress..
 
You are correct - I have never particioned a disk before, so thanks for that I will try it (with any luck, the machine arrives tomorrow and I can start playing :) ...)
 
Dj_Jestar said:
ubuntu also has a GUI partition app bundled with it.
Click to expand...

Ahh, that sounds promising, so I could install unbuntu, part' the HD from within GUI (i.e. point and click so a recent convert such as myself knows what's happening), install windows in the partician, then simply re-arange the boot order to boot from the partician first when I want to boot into windows? Or am I being wildly optomistic and missing something crucial?
 
You'll want to first partition the disk then install Windows. When Windows is on there then install Ubuntu. Ubuntu will install the Grub bootloader. If you want to modify the order of the boot list or which option is selected by default or the timeout time you can find the file that controls the list in /etc/boot/grub/menu.lst
 
Whatever you do, don't install linux before you install windows :eek: :rolleyes:

The hardest part will probably be the initial partitioning for windows. The rest will be easy.

Altho if you're a linux noob, I'm not sure how easy ubuntu64 is :confused: esp for games, I had fun trying to get quake4 running on 64bit a while ago.
 
The easiet way is to install Windows on the appropiate size partition (I'm sure the Windows installer will let you say what partition size..), then install Ubuntu on the remaining empty bit.

If you do it the other way round tho see this page:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows - I followed this successfully after I did it with Ubuntu first then Windows!

NTFS/FAT32 - the difference when concerned with Linux is that Linux can only read NTFS (well, some experimental support writing of data to an NTFS partition is present in Linux but not recommended to be used tbh), where as FAT32 can be written to and read by both Linux and Windows.

Got a feeling XP only lets you install it on to an NTFS drive tho. There is a tool to convert NTFS -> FAT32 keeping data. See http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php

Hope that helps :)
 
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michellez said:
NTFS/FAT32 - the difference when concerned with Linux is that Linux can only read NTFS (well, some experimental support writing of data to an NTFS partition is present in Linux but not recommended to be used tbh), where as FAT32 can be written to and read by both Linux and Windows.
Click to expand...

so make a smallish NTFS partition (say 25% [80gb in this case] of the total), install win into it, leave the rest as FAT32 and install LINUX there and happy hollidays?

Cheers by the way to everyone, it's a real help :)
 
if you've never done it before, or are in any way unsure about what you are doing... BACK UP EVERYTHING first

ta :D
 
steerpike said:
so make a smallish NTFS partition (say 25% [80gb in this case] of the total), install win into it, leave the rest as FAT32 and install LINUX there and happy hollidays?

Cheers by the way to everyone, it's a real help :)
Click to expand...
Not sure if it's a good idea to install linux on FAT32. :eek:

Don't think you can even :) as FAT32 is a windows filesystem.

All you need to do is make a partition for windows, install windows, boot linux installer and tell it to use the free space. It will create it's own partitions (swap etc) itself.

The only thing people are saying is that with FAT32 you can write safely cross platform.
 
nah you want to use EXT3 for linux, not FAT32

you can get EXT3 drivers for windows too if you fancy poking around from outside
 
No you should install linux to an ext3 partition. You can safely write to ntfs using *nix but you should not use it for root. The experiment kernal flag has been around for years (like 4 years+) its not really relevant these days with a filesystem in userspace.

Do it like this, | windows - ntfs | linux - ext3 / | swap | and install GRUB to the mbr, and chainload windows.
 
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