Ubuntu on Laptop, Installation Problems

Tican

Tican

Tican

Soldato
Joined
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Hi all,

I am debating if I should put Ubuntu on my laptop? I have tried the live disk and the wireless worked with ease :cool:, I tried to install last night and it was telling me that it wanted to erase the NTFS section (the whole lot inc. Vista), now I would want to keep Vista on there, is there something I am over looking?

I dont have a disk for Vista as its an OEM one, put on my manufacturer
 
DJ Binks said:
Hi all,

I am debating if I should put Ubuntu on my laptop? I have tried the live disk and the wireless worked with ease :cool:, I tried to install last night and it was telling me that it wanted to erase the NTFS section (the whole lot inc. Vista), now I would want to keep Vista on there, is there something I am over looking?

I dont have a disk for Vista as its an OEM one, put on my manufacturer
Click to expand...

Did you choose custom partitioning from the installer?
If need be shrink your ntfs partition, I'd say 10 GB would be minimal but you could get away with less if necessary.
From your free disc space you should choose a root partition (/) of around 5 gig, a swap partition the same size as your RAM and a home partition of whatever space you have left.
 
likwid said:
Did you choose custom partitioning from the installer?
If need be shrink your ntfs partition, I'd say 10 GB would be minimal but you could get away with less if necessary.
From your free disc space you should choose a root partition (/) of around 5 gig, a swap partition the same size as your RAM and a home partition of whatever space you have left.
Click to expand...

I think I did, I haven't brought my laptop into work today so can't check (a few members of staff have had their laptops stolen by our "clients")

Another thing is that my external drive will no longer work with it, will it :(
 
Your external drive will work fine but there may be problems with writing to it, if it's formatted ntfs. Ntfs write support is possible and is included with the latest ubuntu but i'm not sure whether i'd recommend it as 'safe' given that it (ntfs-3g) is not yet mature.
 
Also, you might need to defragment the windows partition before ubuntu's partition tools can shrink the partition.
 
DJ Binks said:
I dont have a disk for Vista as its an OEM one, put on my manufacturer
Click to expand...

Depending upon the manufacturer, you might be able to create an installation DVD for the OEM install.

I certainly could for my Packard Bell laptop. And it's been well abused reinstalling Vista going to and from OpenSuse installs.

There's usually an install partition on the drive. My laptop has an 8Gb partition.

When installing Linux see if you can customise the partitioning and make sure that partition, if there is one, isn't included in the setup.

Certainly on the OpenSuse install, you can select customise partition and then uncheck partitions you don't want to use.

You can check the partitions in Vista by going to Computer Management > Disk Management and have a look-see for an install partition.
 
Le Samourai said:
Depending upon the manufacturer, you might be able to create an installation DVD for the OEM install.

I certainly could for my Packard Bell laptop. And it's been well abused reinstalling Vista going to and from OpenSuse installs.

There's usually an install partition on the drive. My laptop has an 8Gb partition.
Click to expand...

It gave me the option of burning a DVD, I must have used 3 DVDs trying to get it sorted, but all failed :( (Yet the same batch of DVDs work fine on my PC) - Its an Advent Laptop

likwid said:
Is the NTFS partition full? Does the drive currently contain this one partition?
Click to expand...

NTFS takes up the whole drive, but from what I can gather, I should be able to resize it? It is currently using 50 out of 80gb or simular
 
likwid said:
Your external drive will work fine but there may be problems with writing to it, if it's formatted ntfs. Ntfs write support is possible and is included with the latest ubuntu but i'm not sure whether i'd recommend it as 'safe' given that it (ntfs-3g) is not yet mature.
Click to expand...

I have never had a problem with it and ran serveral hard drives over a network formatted as ntfs
 
DJ Binks said:
Hi all,

I am debating if I should put Ubuntu on my laptop? I have tried the live disk and the wireless worked with ease :cool:, I tried to install last night and it was telling me that it wanted to erase the NTFS section (the whole lot inc. Vista), now I would want to keep Vista on there, is there something I am over looking?

I dont have a disk for Vista as its an OEM one, put on my manufacturer
Click to expand...

Download Gparted, great partitioning tool
 
likwid said:
Your external drive will work fine but there may be problems with writing to it, if it's formatted ntfs. Ntfs write support is possible and is included with the latest ubuntu but i'm not sure whether i'd recommend it as 'safe' given that it (ntfs-3g) is not yet mature.
Click to expand...

NTFS-3G is now classed as stable and has been for nearly a year. I've certainly had zero problems reading and writing to ntfs partitions under Ubuntu and I think that's true for the vast majority of people now.
 
Grimbough said:
NTFS-3G is now classed as stable and has been for nearly a year. I've certainly had zero problems reading and writing to ntfs partitions under Ubuntu and I think that's true for the vast majority of people now.
Click to expand...
Well a vast majority still leaves a minority of people who have had problems, which in my book means it's not safe for important data.
 
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