I have downloaded ubuntu 11.04 on a usb drive and tried it out first without installing it. I like what I see. I have a 500gb hard drive on my laptop and most of it isn’t in use. I’d like to install Ubuntu and keep Win7, letting me choose which system I want to boot into.
I have the recovery disc and made a system backup.
But then I Google around and I see a lot of other users have had nightmares. They lose Win7 all together.
I see some articles saying you shouldn’t let Ubunut use automatic partition. Some people say you need to pre-partition. Others say you need to prepartion not one but three seperate partitions for Ubuntu.
If you look at this guide to installing it, it’s much more complex
Ya know, if you just want to dip a toe in, I’d recommend a liveCD distro before you install anything. And if you want to go a step further, I’d highly recommend checking out Puppy Linux. It is unique in how flexible it is to install. It has the ability to not just run from a LiveCD (or DVD), but actually save your session to DVD using multitrack recording*, or creating a save file on any other device, external or internal, whether it’s a dedicated partition or even a single existing Windows NTFS partition.
Check out what they have to say about it, even on the Ubuntu forums:
I like this quote from there:
But don’t let the lightweight aspect of Puppy discourage you. You can make it as bloated as you want with it’s convenient package installer system.
*The really cool thing about this is you can take your whole OS with you where ever you go from computer to computer.
I don’t know about any specific issues with current Ubuntu and Win7, but I can give you some general hints:
It’s generally easier to install windows first and linux later, simply because linux installers and boot loaders tend to be a lot more aware of the presence of other operating systems on the drive. I would choose a manual partitioning or at least a thorough review of the “automatic” partitioning suggestions in this case, though. Wouldn’t want to automatically erase the drive.
Using 3+ partitions for linux is recommend if you really know what you’re doing, but in practice, as a home user, you can run without any real issues with only 2 partitions for linux: a swap partition that is there to help you out if the system runs out of memory - generally you’ll want a swap size of something like 2 to 5 times the amount of physical memory (still only a small fraction of your total disc space) - and another partition that contains everything else (the “normal” file system) taking up however much space you want to give to the ubuntu OS.
As far as I can tell, Ubuntu should be capable of making the install fairly painless and risk-free, but I haven’t tried installing it with Win 7 and if at all possible you should make a full backup of your current system before installing any additional operating system.
He already said he tried the Live feature of Ubuntu and liked it. I see no reason to install anything other than Ubuntu as a newcomer. The momentum is with Ubuntu. I can’t imagine the Puppy community is as big as the Ubuntu one, nor the amount of software in Puppy’s repositories is as large as that in Ubuntu’s.
I recommended it as an intermediate step for his secondary OS. He can always move to Ubuntu, and the tools included in Puppy would help take care of the boot loader and partitioning.
As for s/w repositories, you’d be surprised. Puppy has the ability to use the repositories of various distros, including Ubuntu. Another thing that I didn’t mention are puplets, which are distributed custom builds of Puppy that can include all kinds of pre-installed options and special features for general or specific purposes.
Well I like Ubunut and would definately like to install it. I just was wondering if anyone has a dual Ubunut/Win7 system.
I have a full back up of the drive as well as a recovery disk.
One question I have is the so called, debate, over whether to partition you drives first or to let Ubuntu do it for you. I have used EASUS partiton manager on my desktop and on lots of other machines and it’s a great free program, so I have no trouble with that.
I was just wondering if it was necessary or just to let Ubuntu do it’s thing.
I already have Win7 sp1 on my system and the latest Ubuntu 11.04,. which I have tried out and like.
I guess I’ll never really know unless I bite the bullet and go ahead and try huh?
I have a netbook running Win7 and Ubuntu 11.04. There was an issue with the automatic partitioning in 10.10, but I believe that’s been fixed. I, however, always manually partition.
I’ve never used Ubuntu but during most Linux installs, it should tell you what partitioning it’s going to do and you’ll probably click yes to go through with the install. If one step is to format the drive with windows, back out and manually partition. If Ubuntu doesn’t tell you what partitioning it’s going to do before that final ‘yes’, back out and manually partition.
I just used the Ubuntu Windows Installer (I have two computers, a desktop and a laptop, both running Win7) with no problems. You pick the hard drive, tell it how big you want the partition to be, and it goes off and does things for you. If you decide you have had enough of Ubuntu, you can uninstall it from inside windows like any other Application.
I’d still back up my data before doing this if I were you, just to be safe, and because backing up data is always a good habit.
If you have a backup, there is no reason not to simply trust the Ubuntu tools to work properly. They are used by literally millions of people with no problems. A few people manage to screw something up or have some kind of system oddity that causes a problem, and you see only these people represented on the forums. Just pay close attention to what the Ubuntu installer is telling you it will do and make sure it’s what you want (“shrink Windows partition” or something similar).
Also, I agree with the recommendation not to try out any “alternatives” as your first Linux install. You will have questions and problems, I guarantee it, and there are several orders of magnitude more people familiar with Ubuntu than “Puppy Linux” or similar “alternative-alternative” distributions.
As an open-source software developer, if you tell me you are having issues running my software on the latest version of Ubuntu, you bet I will pay attention. If you tell me you’re having trouble with “Puppy Linux”, I’ll politely tell you that users on other platforms report no issues and it must be something wrong with your distribution.
Have you got a win7 install disc? If you do, it might be easier to (back everything up,) format the drive, repartition, and install. If not - and if your hd only has one partition (the win7 one) you need to repartition this to create an empty partition for Ubuntu. I did this and it was a bit of a pain since win7 arranges itself on the hd in a way that makes it hard to shrink the win7 partition.
You could try the Wubi installer (should be included on the live distro). I haven’t tried it myself, but supposedly it works very well and with a lot less hassle than the whole format/repartition show.
I still run Vista but I installed Ubuntu on my laptop and made it dual boot. The installer will partition the drive for you or give you the option of partitioning it for you. Either way, you get the option of determining the size of both partitions. The entire installation was very easy.
The part that seems to be confusing me the most is the need for separate partitions.
Is it better or worse to create them? Should you create them first and then install or should you creat them with Ubuntu partitioner during the install?
In an ideal world, you’d install Windows, leave half of the drive unformatted, then install Ubuntu on the second half of the drive.
In the real world, it’s just fine to shrink your Windows partition to half of the size of the drive, then install Ubuntu on the second half of the drive.
I would, incidentally, defrag and check the disk for file system issues before doing this. Then I’d do a backup of any data I cared about.
If you’re doing weird stuff with a partition, it’s best if the partition is in perfect health. No reason to make a partition tool try to double as a repair tool.
You can do it during the install (back up your files first!). I strongly recommend having a separate root (/) partition (where your OS will be) and /home partition (where all your stuff goes - including bookmarks, special settings etc. These can then be restored if you decide to reinstall at some point). Whether or not you need separate /boot and /etc partitions is debated.
The basic scheme of root, home (and swap) is recommended here, but try searching a bit for different partition schemes.