Dual Boot

[StewartKnight]

I'm running Windoze 7, and I like it, but I'd also like to run a Linux distro off the same h/d.

 

Has anyone done this, what have they used to partition (if necessary) the h/d, how do you select the o/s to boot into & finally.... can you access a NTFS drive with your distro?

 

I personally favour a fedora distro, but I'd like one that makes use of my nvidia 8800gts card for the compiz stuff!

 

I know some distros will partition the h/d and boot from grub, but I need to know I'm not going to fubar my system 1st!

[LosOjos]

I'd say just boot in to your chosen distro's install DVD and go through the motions until you get to HDD formatting options, if it doesn't mention your Windows partition there, just quit what you're doing. I don't think there are many distro's out there now that won't deal with all this for you...

[Jamo]

Use WUBI if you are worried about partitions and losing your data, it will use a hard drive file as a virtual disk, I don't notice that much of a difference in performance tbh.

 

http://wubi-installer.org/

[Domino]

The safest possible thing to do is to take an image of your HDD first - in theory most mainstream distros won't cause any issues with their formatting tools, but you can never be too careful.

 

I'd suggest ubuntu as a good place to look - the formatting tools are very easy to use and nicely laid out, and you get the snazzy compiz graphics

[Jamo]

I'd say just boot in to your chosen distro's install DVD and go through the motions until you get to HDD formatting options, if it doesn't mention your Windows partition there, just quit what you're doing. I don't think there are many distro's out there now that won't deal with all this for you...

 

If you do shrink your windows partition with ubuntu partitioner, just be aware that you will more than likely have to run scan disk on it a number of times after to get it back working again!

[StewartKnight]

What I don't like about ubuntu is that it feels like Tomy's My First Operating System.

 

I also like Fedora, because, when you see an rpm package, you know it's going to work!

[Jamo]

You can access an NTFS partition using ntfs-3g which is installed with Ubuntu but I am not sure with Fedora. You would usually use something like

 

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/hda1 /mount/c -force

[LosOjos]

You can access an NTFS partition using ntfs-3g which is installed with Ubuntu but I am not sure with Fedora. You would usually use something like

 

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/hda1 /mount/c -force

 

Both being Linux, if it's possible in one distro it's possible in another (though not always as easily). If I remember correctly though, Fedora can mount NTFS drives, and the last time I used it, it was still Red Hat, so by now it should be able to do it out of the box I would have thought

[mac_shinobi]

I thought - correct me anyone if I am wrong ( am guessing Geoff or someone who is knowledgeable on the linux side will most likely have a better answer but from what I am aware you can either do it two ways

 

1. Install linux first using linux to setup the partitions ( one for linux, one for swap for linux, one for windows formatted as FAT32 / FAT ) then install windows using the FAT partition which you can convert to NTFS when doing the windows installation ( not sure how that would effect the boot partition ref linux )

 

2. As above make an image in case it goes sunny side up of windows 7, then install linux ( which ever distro ) and once linux is installed you use the recovery console to run bootcfg, fixboot / fixmbr commands ( relevant commands that you need to run ) so it detects and can use the windows partition.

[Jamo]

Both being Linux, if it's possible in one distro it's possible in another (though not always as easily). If I remember correctly though, Fedora can mount NTFS drives, and the last time I used it, it was still Red Hat, so by now it should be able to do it out of the box I would have thought

 

 

True

 

Here is a pretty exhaustive list of Linux distros which write to NTFS using the NTFS-3G driver.

 

NTFS-3G in Distributions

[Jamo]

I thought - correct me anyone if I am wrong ( am guessing Geoff or someone who is knowledgeable on the linux side will most likely have a better answer but from what I am aware you can either do it two ways

 

1. Install linux first using linux to setup the partitions ( one for linux, one for swap for linux, one for windows formatted as FAT32 / FAT ) then install windows using the FAT partition which you can convert to NTFS when doing the windows installation ( not sure how that would effect the boot partition ref linux )

 

2. As above make an image in case it goes sunny side up of windows 7, then install linux ( which ever distro ) and once linux is installed you use the recovery console to run bootcfg, fixboot / fixmbr commands ( relevant commands that you need to run ) so it detects and can use the windows partition.

 

Grub these days will find the Windows partition by default and add it to the list of avail OS's you will only have to perform the fixboot etc when you remove linux. I would still recommend Ubuntu though, for your RPM's you just replace them with compatible .DEBs which do the same job

[computer_expert]

What I don't like about ubuntu is that it feels like Tomy's My First Operating System.

 

and (from experience) they break more things with every release.

 

I'd recommend either debian (ubuntu is based on debian) or fedora.

[StewartKnight]

I have installed Ubuntu, and I don't like it; I much prefer Fedora. I miss some of the more techy features from Fedora, but I did get compiz and the graphics card working easily with ubuntu!

 

FYI you install windows 7 first and then Ubuntu installs itself along side windows 7.

Boots ok, but how the freak do I go in as root... so annoying... constantly getting permissions errors on folders in ubuntu.

[Jamo]

I have installed Ubuntu, and I don't like it; I much prefer Fedora. I miss some of the more techy features from Fedora, but I did get compiz and the graphics card working easily with ubuntu!

 

FYI you install windows 7 first and then Ubuntu installs itself along side windows 7.

Boots ok, but how the freak do I go in as root... so annoying... constantly getting permissions errors on folders in ubuntu.

 

 

Just create a shortcut to sudo nautilus

 

Will load the explorer with root access

 

Root is disabled by default so the noobs don't break stuff

[computer_expert]

Boots ok, but how the freak do I go in as root... so annoying... constantly getting permissions errors on folders in ubuntu.

 

add the 'sudo' command at the terminal.

 

to enable the root account: 'sudo passwd root' and enter a new password (after typing your current password to allow privilege escalation)