Dual boot Kubuntu / Vista on a laptop?

[ninique305]

I've been looking into Linux for a while, and want to learn it. I know quite a lot about computers in general, and I want to try dual booting Kubuntu. The only computer that I have that no one else uses but me is my laptop, so I want to try doing it on that, but I don't know how, and reading things about dual booting on the internet confuses me.

I have an Acer 9300 laptop with a 140gb hard disk and vista home premium pre-installed on it. Currently, my disk is partitioned in 3 parts, which were there when I first bought the laptop: a partition called "EISA Configuration" (7gb), a primary partition with windows on it that takes up half of my hard drive, and another primary partition with nothing on it that takes up the other half.

I would like to install Kubuntu on that third partition but I don't know how. Can somebody walk me through it in simple terms please? Also, do I have to make another partition to put shared files in? How do I do that?

[Pizzarth]

Re: Dual boot Kubuntu / Vista on a laptop?

Well if you havent got it figured out by now, I'd say through the livecd installation, on the step of the partition managing go into manual mode, format that partition and recreate it with the ext3 file system. it might sound weird but it's obvious when you get there, if memory serves correctly. just clear up that into free space and create a partition from there.

[msh]

Re: Dual boot Kubuntu / Vista on a laptop?

Or you can use wubi to install kubuntu on your windows partition without a CD.

Works like a charm, it installs dual boot by default.

Read more here: http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntu...-US/index.html

[Acer9504WSMi]

Re: Dual boot Kubuntu / Vista on a laptop?

I've been looking into Linux for a while, and want to learn it. I know quite a lot about computers in general, and I want to try dual booting Kubuntu. The only computer that I have that no one else uses but me is my laptop, so I want to try doing it on that, but I don't know how, and reading things about dual booting on the internet confuses me.

I have an Acer 9300 laptop with a 140gb hard disk and vista home premium pre-installed on it. Currently, my disk is partitioned in 3 parts, which were there when I first bought the laptop: a partition called "EISA Configuration" (7gb), a primary partition with windows on it that takes up half of my hard drive, and another primary partition with nothing on it that takes up the other half.

I would like to install Kubuntu on that third partition but I don't know how. Can somebody walk me through it in simple terms please? Also, do I have to make another partition to put shared files in? How do I do that?

Hi, I am in a similar position with a similar machine. I have got Vista, Ubuntu and Kubuntu on 3 seperate partitions. I changed the harddrive in case of future issues with the laptop guarantee, first registering with Acer extended warranty, but not registering MS Vista, then as the laptop was preinstalled with Vista, I made both a default recovery CD and a hardware drivers CD from the Acer management consol. After removing the harddrive and fitting a Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160GB ST9160823AS 2.5" 7200RPM SATA 8MB Cache HDD - OEM harddrive in its place [which has a 3yr warranty and is reasonably priced] I used Fdisk to make 2 partitions, also tried to use Cute Partiton Manager [which was limiting] but it did enable me to create a linux swap partition, then I tried to boot ubuntu live disk. No joy. Relented in the end to reinstalling Vista with the recovery disk I had made. I I installed Ubuntu again and it worked, pausing in process to allow me to insert the hardware disk I had made. Not everything worked, didn't check everything but was able to connect to internet by ethernet. I did not install to the harddisk at that time. I removed the Ubuntu live disk and in Vista, shrunk vista to the minimum size, taking up about 16gb plus another 13gb unallocated. I then had some struggles poking in the dark a bit with gparted and parted magic which uses gparted. I managed to make some alterations to the partition structure however, leaving vista untouched. Next I installed Kubuntu, which insisted the partitioning I had done was wrong, but the disk allowed me to make the partition I was trying to install to a root and I also agreed to installing the boot manager to the default option. I rebooted and it was great, pausing with an option to boot alternative options before going on to boot Kubuntu. Next I installed the Ubuntu live disk again and installed it to a third partition. I now successfully can boot whichever of the three OS I want. In both Ubuntu and Kubuntu I now have wireless internet working on WPA encryption, though the key for the password does not hold for next time. No sound at all yet, though that is not my biggest concern just now. I next intend to install a trial of VMware workstation and install XP, Kubuntu and maybe some others eventually onto that in the hope I can migrate gracefully from being an XP user to a Linux one. Yesterday, an Italian Acer 9303 user posted their install details on http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools

Rgds. Alan.