An Intro to Linux Part 4: Dual Booting Ubuntu With Windows (This Week In Linux)

[pandaclue2]

Could I install unbuntu on a different harddrive then my windows os

And still be able to dual boot them???

[Oddjob23747]

what's the big differance between wubi and the full install as far as use goes?

[dainbreadfilms]

LOL it gets a little pissed off about that.... classic.

[MultiJamala]

Is it me, or do you always sound a bit ill in most of your videos lol.

[thisweekinlinux]

@MultiJamala nope, it's not just you. I get sinus infections pretty regularly.

[MiggyCW]

@MultiJamala Did you hit F12 on 1:10 - 1:12?

[JeffreySKang]

I'm running windows on a laptop. It's infected and I can't remove the viruses so I want to wipe the hard disk clean and install ubuntu. That is, I don't have anything important on the computer now, so I don't care if it's all erased. Is it as easy as installing it?

[thisweekinlinux]

@JeffreySKang yup. if you want to wipe EVERYTHING, when you boot up the Ubuntu liveCD, tell it to install, and tell it to erase Windows and use the entire hard disk.

[snake2006]

@JeffreySKang

Just load Ubuntu on it and you can remove the viruses from Windows in Ubuntu.

[cohnjesse]

So will this erase the info from windows such as the data I have on the HD right now?

[thisweekinlinux]

@cohnjesse if you partition the drive appropriately (resize the NTFS partition, making sure not to format it) you shouldn't lose any data. To be safe, you should always make a backup of your data though.

[LinuxBruiser]

In my practice I find that booting onto a Windows disc and going into recovery mode, using the command chkdsk /r will make it work 99% of the time IF Windows refuses to boot post Ubuntu install. Good luck to and welcome all the new Linux users .

[experimental0000]

when you select side by side as you said, does it automatically split the partition space roughly 50/50 like it shows under the advanced area with the slider?

[thisweekinlinux]

@experimental0000 exactly. it's highly recommended to defrag your windows partition if you're going to resize anything though.

[experimental0000]

@thisweekinlinux just checking. I've been prepping my laptop for 3 hours to get it in order (including updates defrags and spyware sweeps I tend to keep my systems as up to date as possible to avoid problems

[s3k70r8]

when loading it from a flash in my BIOS it seemed to work then crashed stating that "casper would not mount" any ideas?

[thisweekinlinux]

@s3k70r8 Did you create the flash using the USB disc creator in the System menu?

[s3k70r8]

@thisweekinlinux I used the USB installer program, what do you mean by flash?

[s3k70r8]

@thisweekinlinux sorry I spaced yeah I did use the flash creator.

[thisweekinlinux]

@s3k70r8 There might be a bug in the newer versions of that. I read something about it when looking at Pinguy OS recently. Check out Unetbootin. It does the same thing, but works for a ton of distros.

[yurigglutube]

I didn't found windows on my computer, so what should I do? Install it first?

[thisweekinlinux]

@yurigglutube Id you don't already have Windows on your computer, and you want to install Windows and Ubuntu, you will want to install Windows first, because otherwise it will overwrite the Ubuntu bootloader.

[chris07081]

mine doesnt give me the option of which os to select....

Help?

[thisweekinlinux]

@chris07081 after you turn your computer on, right after the BIOS beeps, you might have to hold the Shift key to see the menu with the boot options. Ubuntu changed their bootloader a bit since I made this video. If you see the menu and Windows doesn't show up in it, you might have accidentally removed Windows.

[angel1933]

just one question

i installed ubuntu on my laptop but i can not see the botton part neither the button to restart

i dont know if you can help but i just want to try

i have windows 7 and my laptop is a sony vpcf115fm

i try to installed ubuntu 10.4 i think it is

[jmsmith1786]

Great set of videos, they're nearly all in my favorites. I've been thinking of giving Linux (ok ubuntu) a spin for a while now. I have one concern/question: I'm currently running Win7 Pro x64 with a 2TB Raid 0 (2 1 TB drives). I can't use Wubi because to the best of my knowledge wubi doesn't work on a raided system. Can I do a straight install, partitioning my Raid 0 drive? Or can/should I get a third HDD and dual boot with that? I can't find this info anywhere.

[jmsmith1786]

jmsmith1786 - I understand that the last question sort of relates to diffusiventity's question about two hard drives but is that the route I should go or do you think I should try to mess with my raid set up at all?

[thisweekinlinux]

@jmsmith1786 I believe you can do raid with a default Ubuntu install. I haven't had the opportunity to do it though. Might check the Ubuntu Forums out.

[diffusiventity]

Thanks so much for these simple and informative videos.

Is it possible to dual boot over 2 hard drives? I tried this before but GRUB2 couldn't find Vista, and then I accidentally formatted the hard drive with Vista on it. It didn't matter, I never used it for anything, but now that I need it back is it possible to do this or will I have to use my second hard drive for a dual boot and leave a whole hard drive empty?

[thisweekinlinux]

@diffusiventity it should definitely be possible to do that. You might have to manually edit your grub.cfg file. Arch has a page on it, and basically where it says "set root=(hd0,3)", you'd change the hd0 to hd1 for your second hard drive, and the 3 to whatever partition it's on.

[Sonicrulz12]

will i i have to defragment the hard drive only or all the drives

[thisweekinlinux]

@Sonicrulz12 the only defragmenting you should have to do is within Windows. It's possible to defragment Linux drives, but not as necessary.

[Sonicrulz12]

i have question what if you have a netbook

[thisweekinlinux]

@Sonicrulz12 should work much the same way, but replace the Ubuntu liveCD with a bootable USB drive.

[TheArnabDas]

very nicely done. i couldnt have imagined Vbox being put to better use, great great job!

btw glad to see u using ubuntu 10.04 beta again (judging from the wallpaper which everyone has simply fallen in love with :) i use that wallpaper on my 9.10! :D )

[thisweekinlinux]

@TheArnabDas Thanks very much! I'm definitely not a big fan of the purple wallpaper myself, but I haven't gone out of my way to change it yet. :)

[FlamingLinux]

awesome, the video is pretty detailed. You are doing great. keep it up!

Oh, and btw in windows vista and windows 7, from what i know its actually better to partition windows with the disk management. Just so you know... :O)

[thisweekinlinux]

@FlamingLinux Thanks, dude!

Yeah, I seem to remember reading something about that. Every system I've owned that had Vista or Win 7 very quickly was formatted and had linux installed.

[FlamingLinux]

@thisweekinlinux

yeah same here... even though i have only one system that runs windows 7.

btw, how much trouble did you face total when making this video? i recall you talking about that a little bit in Parker's live show last night.

[thisweekinlinux]

@FlamingLinux not too much. there's a weird thing about virtualbox hard drives that gparted wouldn't resize the partitions, so I just created a new one, installed windows on it, then did the video. total of a half hour extra work, not bad.

[FlamingLinux]

@thisweekinlinux

haha yeah, not bad especially when compared to my mandriva review. It took me about 3 hours to finally get a good enough clip. But it was 20 mins, and it took me all day long to trim it to 10 mins!

haha I can have a lot of bad luck. O_o

But you are not having much trouble, and your videos come out great, so keep it up. :O)

(wait, didnt i already say that?)

[thisweekinlinux]

@FlamingLinux ouch, I've definitely had a couple of videos that took me hours to shoot (the password reset video was that way). Thanks for the positive response!

[thisweekinlinux]

@Hax0rPr0n yeah, hearing it myself made me shudder a little.

[russjr08]

Great Video!

[thisweekinlinux]

@russjr08 thanks!

[macielightfoot]

ok i have a question when i boot my computer am prompted a black screen with a flashing white underscore after some time it will load which operating system i want windows or ubuntu like it should how do i get rid of the black screen with flashing underscore in the corner to go away so it automatically loads the option to choose windows or ubuntu

[thisweekinlinux]

@macielightfoot so after you've installed it doesn't give you the option to choose which OS to load?

[roflschofel]

I used Wubi here and at the time I can't really tell what the advantages off a full install would be, I haven't used XP at and not planning on using it but I am just curious if it would be wiser for me to do a full install?

[thisweekinlinux]

@roflschofel the full install should give you some performance increases, I believe. Wubi is running the install off a single file within your NTFS partition, and while it's gotten better, NTFS reading/writing in Linux is still very slow. It also gives you a bit more security for your linux install. If you're running Wubi and Windows gets messed up badly enough that you have to reinstall, most likely you'll lose your Ubuntu install as well. Hope this helps.

[H4x0r18]

This looks great man! You did a good job! Im glad you told the new users to becareful when selecting the "entire hard drive" and it could cause data loss. Most beginners are not aware of that. This video is in great detail and pretty simple step-by-step instructions. :)

[thisweekinlinux]

@H4x0r18 Thanks! It actually took a lot longer to put together than I expected (I failed installing the first time myself, because I hit Skip at the wrong time, and my virtualbox didn't want to let me resize the partition by default), but I'm pleased with the result.

[thisweekinlinux]

@TheLinuxWizKid thanks dude, great live show last night!

[frvfilms]

u should make videos on what if u f****k up wile partioning or installing,

ex: if u turn it off while it partitions if u only the grub installed if there is no option 2:21 on windows partition or only one option on partition

[thisweekinlinux]

@frvfilms definitely a great idea. once the primary part of this series is over, I might do a video or two on troubleshooting, answering questions, etc. with regard to the things discussed in the Intro to Linux series. Thanks!

[scouser73ubuntu]

Great video mate, I'm looking forward to the Linux alternatives videos.

[thisweekinlinux]

@scouser73ubuntu thanks! Now that most of the screencasting parts of this are done, I think the rest of the videos should be a lot more fun for me to do (lots of people love screencasting, it's just not my cup of tea)

[russjr08]

@scouser73ubuntu Same Here! :)

[nolanhester1]

nice tutorial video bro :) next time you should make a comment about having to use a repair disk in windows vista and 7 when you use gparted to resize the disk :)

[thisweekinlinux]

@nolanhester1 see, that's something I haven't experienced, because I don't run Win 7 or Vista. Thanks for mentioning it.

[cavibird2005]

@nolanhester1 I'm running 7 and PCLOS, I haven't had any issue. Just a straight up install

[nolanhester1]

@cavibird2005 I did a resize with gparted of my friends 7 partition and had to use the repair disk to fix it so it would boot. :)