Win 7 and Kubuntu 18 dual boot?

[GregM]

I have just bought an Optiplex 990 64 bit used computer for a platform for Kubuntu 18.04 when it comes out.

The Optiplex has Win 7 installed on a 500 gb conventional hard drive.
I have purchased a 90 gb SSD drive and want to put Win 7 on half and Kubuntu 18 on the other half.

I usually use Clonezilla to do backups of my hard drives. The only problem it has is it wants to clone to a drive that is as big or bigger than the one you are cloning.
So I have all my Kubuntu installs on a 60 gb SSDs and clone to a 120 gb. It makes it less confusing as to which way the clone is going as I have gone the wrong way (once!) and screwed myself.

So I think I need to shrink the partition on the 500 gb drive so it is around 45 gb.
Then clone it to the new 90 gb SSD leaving 45gb for Kubuntu 18 when it is released.

Is my thinking correct on this?
Or should I do things in a different order?

Instructions/directions/suggestions?

Thanks

[oshunluvr]

I don't have much experience with Clonezilla, but your plan seems sound.

I'm in the middle of doing my first Win 7 dual boot as well, so please post back on your successes/problems.

In my case, I am using the current Windows drive with Kubuntu and CentOS so no Clonezilla needed. I did download and install "Defraggler". Windows defrag tool reported 0% fragmentation, what a joke. Defraggler reported (and showed me) 27% fragmentation and allowed me to defrag my free-space as well. Which meant it moved all the files to the front of the partition to maximize the amount I could shrink it. I freed 100GB for CentOS and 60 for Kubuntu. I recommend installing and using Defraggler before attempting to shrink your partition, then re-running it again after shrinking. Gparted seemed to cause a small amount of fragmentation as it did it's job.

What I did:
Defrag with Defraggler.
Boot to Gparted LiveUSB.
Shrank the Windows partition and created a swap, ext4 (Centos), and btrfs (Kubuntu) partition.
Booted to Windows and ran the chkdsk tool (it asked me on reboot immediately after the shrink operation).
Ran Defraggler again and rebooted.
Booted to Kubuntu 18.04 and installed it.

I did not install grub yet and this laptop is using legacy boot (no efi) and secure boot is off. It is Windows 7 Pro. I was unsure if GRUB would install without breaking my ability to boot Windows and I'm away from home working. This is my work laptop so I didn't want to chance not having it working when I needed it. I tried EasyBCD - A windows boot manager utility - but it wouldn't boot the Kubuntu install. I suspect because Kubuntu is installed to btrfs and the EasyBCD chain bootloader can't read that format. I wiped EasyBCD and am going to try GRUB after making a backup of the boot loader.

[GreyGeek]

Last weekend I installed KDE Neon with Btrfs onto a 2011 Acer laptop running Win7 Pro. The 500Gb HD was divided into two about equal parts. I re-installed Win7 first. That took about 10-12 hours of kb installations and reboots. I put Neon on the sda5 partition. Win7 took sda1, sda2 and sda3. Swap was on sda4. Grub was put on sda. I installed grub-maximizer on Neon and set Win7 as the default boot. (The owner is a working psychologist and required Windows based software). Boots and runs perfectly.

[GregM]

Normally I wouldn't care about Win 7, because I really don't care for it. But on rare occasions, it's handy to have like for my Photoshop program which requires Win 7
Plus it's free etc.
So I guess I will try to save it.
It's just such a pain in the butt.

[GreyGeek]

Win 7 and Kubuntu 18 dual boot?

If you keep Win7 then you should regularly log into it and do updates. If you wait like I did one time, for 6 to 9 months (can't remember exactly how long), you'll be greeted with thousands of updates. In my last case it was over 100,000 and took several hours. That's when I re-evaluated things and decided that my use of Windows was so infrequent, and my Linux apps were good enough, so I re-installed Kubuntu and gave it the entire HD. I've never missed it. The only Windows program I have used, written in 2005, a PLC programming dev tool, runs fine under WINE. Having just finished the mods for that tractor app I don't think I'll ever use Windows apps again.

[GregM]

New question...
I got my new/old computer and played with the hard drive last night. All looks good.
With my reading here and there on the net, I found out how to shrink the partition down using Win 7 tools and did. But I got stuck at 80gb (started at 500) and want to get down just under 60gb.
Reading a bit more (elsewhere) I found a conversation where the user used Gparted and was able to get the Win 7 partition down even lower than 80. He apparently booted from the 16.04 install disk.

So today's question is...

Is Gparted on the Kubuntu 16.04...64 bit install disk and if not, how can I use it to work on the Win 7 hard drive?

Thank you

[GreyGeek]

parted is in the repository and may even be on the install disk. Even so, you can, with the LiveUSD or DVD use Muon to add it and run it on other devices. It doesn't actually save to the LiveUSB unless you used persistence when you created it.

[GregM]

Thanks
I'll try

[GregM]

Other new plan...
On one of my computers I have Win 7 on one hard drive (I need it to run Photoshop) and XP on another hard drive (need it to run a CadCam program left over from my machine shop...I still make things even though I'm retired).
In the bios I just told it what boot order so it normally boots Win 7, unless I hit F12 and tell it to boot from the XP drive.
I think I might do that on the new computer.
Put Win 7 on a 60gb SSD and Kubuntu 18 on a 90gb.
Normally I will boot Kubuntu, but if I have to I will F12 boot Win 7.

Thoughts?

[GregM]

I tried shrinking the Win 7 hdrive with KDE Partition Manager which came on the 16.04 install disk. Worked great.
Ran Defrag and a couple other maintenance programs on that drive after I shrank it and it is working fine.

[GreyGeek]

Let us know how Kubuntu 18 is working for you!

[GregM]

I think I'll wait until the end of April when the official release is out.

[GreyGeek]

I think I'll wait until the end of April when the official release is out.

Or even the end of May after the unanticipated bugs have been sprayed?

However, when I first used Kubuntu I installed the alpha version of 9.04 in January and found it stable. Ditto for 12.04 and 14.04. (My wife’s Notebook is still running 14.04). I installed 16.04 after it went gold in April. It was excellent as well. In August of 2016, IIRC, I installed KDE Neon User Edition, when it was first released because I wanted the latest and greatest, and stable, release of the KDE desktop. I also put it on top of Btrfs.

That combo has given me the fastest, most powerful and easiest Linux that I have ever used. My Acer was built in 2011 and for five years running apps using my secondary NVIDIA GT 650M was a pain, giving poor and spotty results. Now, NVIDIA powers the Plasma desktop from the login and every app runs using it automatically, as if NVIDIA were the primary GPU , but it is not, and I cannot make it the primary because the BIOS doesn’t offer that setting.

So, in my experience, it hasn’t made any difference if I installed at alpha or a month after gold. The real question is “is there any feature offered that you can’t wait to get your hands on?”

Besides NVIDIA transparency, the most powerful and indispensable feature to be added to Linux is Btrfs.

[GregM]

Disaster strikes...
I recommend not using SSD-NOW, the cloning software they give you when you buy a Kingston SSD.
I ran it to move Win 7 from the 500gb conventional hdrive to my SSD. It said it worked but when I try to boot either drive it says it (they) are broke and I need to find a Win 7 install disk and have it "repair" the hdrive.

Not what I wanted to hear.

So now if I can't find a Win 7 Pro disk to fix it, I have lost it.

[GregM]

Hooray!
After a lot of reading and a lot more searching, I was able to download a Win 7 Pro 64 bit Rescue Disk. About a 225 meg ISO file. Burned to a DVD, it could not have taken any more than a minute to do the actual repair once booted.

What took so long was finding it.
Apparently microsoft does not like people helping other people fix Win 7, so they keep making them take down their download sites. This ISO does nothing but repair a bad boot file. You have to already have paid for and own Win 7, this DOES NOT give away anything belonging to Microsoft. They are just butt heads imo. Which is why I always consider microsoft last when I consider software or OSs.

Anyway it's now fixed and operating on my 60gb SSD.

Still...don't use that SSD-NOW program.

Whew!