New Laptop with Vista Install Feisty

[adamsjw2]

Hi all,
Just bought a new toshiba laptop with Vista Home Premium. Any hurdles to jump to install 7.04? I noticed on the qtparted partitioner that I have two ntfs partitions: 584mg & 1180000 mg. I didn't think Vista used ntfs, but that's probably the only way qparted can identify it.
Any suggests would be greatly appreciated.
JA

[dibl]

Re: New Laptop with Vista Install Feisty

I just set up a new PC that had Vista pre-installed, and put Feisty on it without ever booting the Vista OS. I used a GParted Live CD to do the partitioning. But, I have subsequently read that you should use Vista's partition utility to shrink its partition, if you don't want trouble, so I would follow that advice if I were doing it again.

Vista uses 2 partitions, versus prior Windows versions that only needed one. So those are your two NTFS partitions. Leave the little one as-is, shrink the big one for your Linux OS. If you want to make a separate /home partition, you'll have to make extended partitions since you're limited to 4 primaries per drive.

[musta ruhtinas]

Re: New Laptop with Vista Install Feisty

I have just finished installing kubuntu feisty on my newly bought toshiba with no major hassles aside from the sound setup; it came with a 1.5 GB ntfs partition labeled WinRE (probably for restoring, or perhaps some boot info) and a whopping 110GB ntfs one used for vista. Even though vista occupied about 11 GB , and i defragmented the partition, turned off system restore, etc. , i could shrink it only to 55 GB using the disk manager. So i fired up the gparted live cd and shrank it to a more reasonable 20GB without any troubles. On first boot after the gparted resizing vista will perform a system check, but everything should be ok. For the feisty installation i used the alternate cd and all went very smooth.

[Qqmike]

Re: New Laptop with Vista Install Feisty

Don’t have Vista, still on XP, but there aren’t any major booting issues for simple setups, I don’t think.

*** The definitive dual-booting guide: Linux, Vista and XP step-by-step
http://apcmag.com/dualboot


btw, How to make Windows XP last for the next seven years (if you don’t want Vista upgrade):
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9026940

(July 18, 2007)

[Snowhog]

Re: New Laptop with Vista Install Feisty

dibl's advice is correct and sound. I also have a Toshiba laptop (Satellite P105-S6147) that of course, came pre-installed with M$ Vista Home Premium.

Vista pre-installs do utilize two partitions on the HD. The smaller one MUST be left alone. The larger one is the one to resize in order to allow another OS to be installed for dual/multi-booting. Again, you are STRONGLY advised to utilize the native Vista disk utility for resizing the HD partition. Before you do however, check to see if System Restore Points have been turned on. If this feature has, you NEED to turn it off before resizing the HD partition. See the following:
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Win...e79e51033.mspx

Resizing the Vista HD partition is easy to do using it's own built in utility. See the following:
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Win...4f4cc1033.mspx

Once these two preparation steps have been accomplished, you can then start to install Kubuntu. As dibl suggested, using the GParted Live CD (download and burn to CD if you don't already have it) to setup the newly created unused space on the Vista HD is quite easy. Deciding how you want to lay out your Kubuntu install requires just a bit of thought before you begin.

It is recommended that you create at least three partitions for you Kubuntu installation. A 5GB to 10GB partition for root ( / ) set as bootable, a swap partition that is 1.5 times as large as you installed RAM (if you laptop has 4GB of RAM, make the swap partition 6GB), and the remaining unused space can be used for you home ( /home ) partition. If however, you think that you may want to install additional OS's, you can reserve some of this remaining unused space, so make the /home partition less than the remaining unused space.

All this said however, it is recommended that before you actually attempt to install Kubuntu, you boot the LiveCD and check just how much of your laptops hardware it actually detects and sets up correctly. Make sure that you can connect to the Internet. Make sure you are happy with the video display - if you don't get to the nice GUI desktop from booting the LiveCD, you will have issues with the installation. That can be addressed.

This forum has a wealth of knowledgeable members, so if you run into problems, come back and ask your questions. You will be assisted.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux! 8)

[adamsjw2]

Re: New Laptop with Vista Install Feisty

Thanks everyone for your help. I've been dual booting Lnux & some form of Win for 5 years on, but I haven't been in the Vista world at all, until last week. I can dual boot, but the sound doesn't work, apparently a well documented problem with Toshiba and Debian based distros. I've tried every solution, about 2 dozen with no luck. So I'll wait until Gutsy is released to see if it works. I'm going to download PClinuxOS and Suse to see if they will configure the sound.
Thanks again,

[blake589t]

Re: New Laptop with Vista Install Feisty

Well, I have an HP, but I wanted to install kubuntu too...I have my whole life on the computer so yah. Is there a way to install kubuntu without partitioning or re-formatting? I really dont want linux to so as touch my windows files at all... so yah. I kinda lyk want them to dual boot, because I just got out of the ages of virtual machines.