Dual Boot Win10 - Kubuntu.

[hyrulian]

Hi,

I, really, really, don't want to break my Windows installation so i'm asking for help to get this done properly.

Currently i have a Windows 10 installation on my disk. My motherboard is ASUS P5Q3.

When i open Disk Management, my disk looks like this:

[Disk 0 basic 1860 GB online]

- System Reserved 500MB NTFS, Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition).

- (C 1375GB NTFS, Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition).

- 488GB Unallocated


I have disabled fast boot in BIOS and made a working Kubuntu boot-USB formatted as NTFS using rufus.

When I boot from USB and run installation i get a message asking me to unmount something - What should i do here?

After that i come to disk thingy and i select custom. Here i'm lost aswell, what should i do here?

[Snowhog]

Welcome.

The 'first' thing you *need* to do is shrink the volume that Windows 10 occupies on the HDD. You need to use the Windows 10 Disk Management Utility to do this, and this must be done before you attempt to install another OS onto the HDD; attempting to do so before shrinking the Windows 10 volume will result in failure.

See How to Shrink and create space for a Windows 10 partition on your drive. Once you have that done, let us know and we can assist in helping you get Kubuntu installed.

[hyrulian]

Thank you :-),

I have shrunk the windows 10 partition with 50gb and currently have 520GB unallocated. Do i need to pre-format it?

[Snowhog]

Most of us, I believe, would recommend that you prepartition the unused space before starting the installation. GParted LiveUSB is a good tool and can be downloaded here.

A recommend partitioning scheme is to create a partition for root ( / ), a partition for home ( /home ), and a partition for swap. I still use ext4 as the file system type for root and home; it is, some would say, "long in the tooth", but it remains a tried and true file system.

The root partition should be at least 20 GB, IMO; I make mine 25 GB. The swap partition should be at least equal to the amount of RAM you have installed, though old-school thought is to make it 1.5 times the size of installed RAM. The home partition can take the remaining space.

[oshunluvr]

Looks like you had plenty of unallocated space already.

When I boot from USB and run installation i get a message asking me to unmount something - What should i do here?

After that i come to disk thingy and i select custom. Here i'm lost aswell, what should i do here?

I get you're new to Linux, but error messages need to be posted as accurate as possible. It's rather difficult to trouble shoot "unmount something".

I assume when you say "disk thingy" and selected "custom" you mean the "Installation Type" and "Manual"

Generally, unless you have selected a partition already in use, you shouldn't be getting the unmount message. Launch the installer, at Installation Type, choose Manual, and choose "free space". It should then open a window to create a new partition. The installer will format it if it's unformatted when you select "Use as..." which selects the file system type.

If you are going to hibernate your Linux install or you have 4GB of RAM or less, you should make a swap partition along with the install partition. Make it 4GB in size, or matching the amount of RAM you have if it's more than 4GB.

You may also make a separate /home partition during the install - it's recommended.

The "standard" or basic partitioning scheme uses 3 partitions : / (aka "root"), /home, and swap. Normally, 16-20GB is plenty for a Linux install if /home is separate. If you are a big gamer, you might want 24-30GB. You have plenty of drive space, so why not? The default file system is EXT4 which is fine for a beginner.

I recommend you make a recovery boot thumb drive or cd for Windows before you proceed.

[hyrulian]

I've read that there might be conflicts if windows installation is NTFS and Kubuntu is another file system. Would it cause problems?

And is Gparted liveUSB a tool to install Kubuntu on on the USB or HDD? I see i need to partition my USB stick.

[hyrulian]

I've read that there might be conflicts if windows installation is NTFS and Kubuntu is another file system. Would it cause problems?

And is Gparted liveUSB a tool to install Kubuntu on on the USB or HDD? I see i need to partition my USB stick.

Looks like you had plenty of unallocated space already.

I get you're new to Linux, but error messages need to be posted as accurate as possible. It's rather difficult to trouble shoot "unmount something".

I assume when you say "disk thingy" and selected "custom" you mean the "Installation Type" and "Manual"

Generally, unless you have selected a partition already in use, you shouldn't be getting the unmount message. Launch the installer, at Installation Type, choose Manual, and choose "free space". It should then open a window to create a new partition. The installer will format it if it's unformatted when you select "Use as..." which selects the file system type.

If you are going to hibernate your Linux install or you have 4GB of RAM or less, you should make a swap partition along with the install partition. Make it 4GB in size, or matching the amount of RAM you have if it's more than 4GB.

You may also make a separate /home partition during the install - it's recommended.

The "standard" or basic partitioning scheme uses 3 partitions : / (aka "root"), /home, and swap. Normally, 16-20GB is plenty for a Linux install if /home is separate. If you are a big gamer, you might want 24-30GB. You have plenty of drive space, so why not? The default file system is EXT4 which is fine for a beginner.

I recommend you make a recovery boot thumb drive or cd for Windows before you proceed.

I understand, gonna go boot the Kubuntu USB and see what the error message was exactly. Brb!

[oshunluvr]

I've read that there might be conflicts if windows installation is NTFS and Kubuntu is another file system. Would it cause problems?

And is Gparted liveUSB a tool to install Kubuntu on on the USB or HDD? I see i need to partition my USB stick.

Conflicts arise if you install Kubuntu TO an NTFS partition. No others that I am aware of. Windows won't be able to read the Kubuntu EXT4 partition without a special utility but Kubuntu will be able to read the NTFS files.

[oshunluvr]

Gparted Live is a bootable USB platform with drive formatting and recovery tools and some other disk and file system utilities.

[hyrulian]

Getting a weird screen full of error codes when booting from USB now (which is really weird since i haven't changed the USB stick ). Gonna re-format the USB stick with kubuntu iso.

[oshunluvr]

If you have trouble with the USB imaging, try Etcher.

[hyrulian]

I am currently booted with Kubuntu now. (so pretty... ) and no error this time. Maybe because i formatted the USB drive as FAT32 instead NTFS using rufus.

So... now i have to use gParted and make partitions. Gonna try that

[Snowhog]

...i formatted the USB drive as FAT32 instead NTFS using rufus.

That would be correct. The format of the USB for burning of the .iso is FAT32.

[hyrulian]

Pfew.. finally managed to get the gParted liveUSB to work and booted from it. We're getting closer

I see sda1 and sda2 for windows and unallocated space.

But i couldn't figure out which one of the partitions to format as primary or extended. Read that i need to use extended if i'm gonna use more than 4 partitions - which is the case since: sda1/sda2 are for windows and sda3 /root sda4 /home sda5 /swap for linux.

And i assume i need to format all of partitions (except the windows ones) as EXT4?

[oshunluvr]

Assuming this is a newish computer, it should be using GPT not MBR formatting. Open a terminal there in the GParted session and type:

sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda

You should see this:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1

Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help):

Then hit "q" to quit gdisk.
If the "GPT:" line says "present" like above, you do not need extended partitions. You can have 128 partitions on a GPT disk.

If it says "GPT: not present" then you're using MBR formatting. In that case, yes, you would need Logical partitions. MBR disks can have 4 primary partitions, so first create the SWAP partition as sda3, then create an Extended partition as sda4. Then make your logical partitions for / and /home. Make sda5 for / and use whatever size you settled on, then whatever is remaining as sda6. You might want to leave some space unallocated in case you want to do another full linux install and triple boot. A lot of us do that when we're just getting started with Linux. Leave like 50-100GB unallocated - just a suggestion.

As far as formats: Use EXT4 for / and /home. SWAP partitions are always formatted "swap". You don't need to format the swap partition, the installer will do it when the partition type "swap" is present.