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Who dual boots Windows * with some sort of Linux

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    Who dual boots Windows * with some sort of Linux

    EDIT: I meant Windows 8 but I can't change the title.

    I've got of these laptops that can be started either in UEFI mode with secure boot or so called legacy BIOS mode.

    Has anybody here repartitioned the drive to make room for Linux? And if so, can it only be booted by a USB stick or is there a way to boot Linux normally from the hard drive?

    Thanks
    <Insert idea here> will never be adopted because the politicians are in the pockets of the banks!

    #2
    How to dual-boot Windows 8 and Linux
    While you're waiting, read the free novel we sent you. It's a Spanish story about a guy named 'Manual.'

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      #3
      Originally posted by doodab View Post
      The method explained would only work if the distribution came shipped with Microsoft approved secure verification, which is not my case.

      I would like to have an opinion on much free space to leave on the Windows partition, considering I will only use it in an emergency, eg some unthinkable application that can only work in Windows (the only one I could think of is MS Office, in which case I have plenty of horse power at work).

      What about 20 GB? Would that be enough?

      Then I have to understand if it's better to shrink the partition from within Windows or from Linux with Gparted. If anybody has done it before, please give me a shout.
      <Insert idea here> will never be adopted because the politicians are in the pockets of the banks!

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        #4
        Originally posted by petergriffin View Post
        What about 20 GB? Would that be enough?
        Windows 7 needs 30 gig just for the install, no doubt 8 isn't much better

        Then room for a disk cache the same size as your memory

        Space to install office, say another 10 gigs

        Realistically give it 100gig, disk space is cheap anyway
        Doing the needful since 1827

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          #5
          Originally posted by amcdonald View Post
          Realistically give it 100gig, disk space is cheap anyway
          It makes sense. Another approach would be leaving the minimum for a Linux partition (50-100 Gig) and then mount the NTFS partition and dump non-binaries over there. This would have the advantage of having the data available to Windows too.

          How do you rate the diskmgmt.msc utility?
          <Insert idea here> will never be adopted because the politicians are in the pockets of the banks!

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            #6
            Diskmgmt does the job, but if you're going to worry about secure boot, thinking about it another possibility is to attack from another directions. It might not be want you want but meh through it in the mix

            If your hardware supports it why not use something like Hyper-V and virtualise the guest operating systems on top of the bare metal install of the virtualising technology

            That way Linux, windows whatever you install them on top, you'll not need to dual boot, you could more easily manage multiple installs and change them over time more easily
            Last edited by amcdonald; 19 August 2013, 22:53.
            Doing the needful since 1827

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              #7
              Originally posted by amcdonald View Post
              Diskmgmt does the job, but if you're going to worry about secure boot, thinking about it another possibility is to attack from another directions. It might not be want you want but meh through it in the mix

              If your hardware supports it why not use something like Hyper-V and virtualise the guest operating systems on top of the bare metal install of the virtualising technology

              That way Linux, windows whatever you install them on top, you'll not need to dual boot, you could more easily manage multiple installs and change them over time more easily
              WHS

              virtualisation is the way. I use VMWare and run Linux Mint on it. When using it full screen you forget it's running as a VM.
              Coffee's for closers

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by petergriffin View Post
                The method explained would only work if the distribution came shipped with Microsoft approved secure verification, which is not my case.

                I would like to have an opinion on much free space to leave on the Windows partition, considering I will only use it in an emergency, eg some unthinkable application that can only work in Windows (the only one I could think of is MS Office, in which case I have plenty of horse power at work).

                What about 20 GB? Would that be enough?
                Go for 50GB at least, preferably 100GB. My Windows 8 system is sitting inside a VMware Fusion virtual disk of 105 GB. I managed to shrink that from within Windows so that the Windows partition is currently 48 GB and the second partition (currently unused) is 57 GB, so I have plenty of room for expansion. In a typical virtual machine setup, real disk space isn't used until it's written to; my Win8 instance is only taking up 41 GB of real disk space at the moment, and that Linux instance which has a 100GB disk is only using 20GB real space.

                With Win8 Pro, the Express editions of SQL and Visual Studio, plus the usual tools like OpenOffice, Cygwin, Firefox, VLC etc, my 48GB Windows 8 partition only has 16GB free.

                Originally posted by petergriffin View Post
                Then I have to understand if it's better to shrink the partition from within Windows or from Linux with Gparted. If anybody has done it before, please give me a shout.
                Do not try to use Gparted on NTFS boot partitions. As of a year or 18 months ago it didn't understand NTFS disk geometry properly and a subsequent boot would result in some pretty lengthy CHKDSK runs. Shrink it as far as it will go from within Windows. To shrink further you will need to mount it as a non-system disk in another instance of Windows or buy other software which is designed to deal with NTFS in its latest incarnation.

                As others have said, your best bet is to stuff either Windows or Linux into a virtual machine. No more fights with one OS stomping on the other's boot setup. Virtualisation really is the way to go here.
                Last edited by Sysman; 21 August 2013, 11:49.
                Behold the warranty -- the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away.

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by Sysman View Post
                  Go for 50GB at least, preferably 100GB.
                  Do you mean 50GB free space or 50GB in total? On my laptop WIndows 8 takes 30GB, not counting the three (!) recovery partitions.
                  Originally posted by Sysman View Post
                  As others have said, your best bet is to stuff either Windows or Linux into a virtual machine. No more fights with one OS stomping on the other's boot setup. Virtualisation really is the way to go here.
                  I'll probably do the opposite. I'll boot from Linux and mount the Win partition on Qemu-kvm.
                  <Insert idea here> will never be adopted because the politicians are in the pockets of the banks!

                  Comment


                    #10
                    i would run linux as the base and just use kvm to create a windows vm (or more)

                    use kvm quite happily on my hp microserver, run a couple of windows vm's in there (domain server, dhcp, etc)

                    considering getting one of them dell xps 13 developer edition laptops, not a bad price for a nice linux lappy
                    Politicians are wonderfull people, as long as they stay away from things they don't understand, like working for a living!

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