Dual Boot Vista & Linux: Experience and Advice

[J Goodrich]

Does anyone have any experience with this on their computers? I have minimal experience with Linux, but since I'm going to school in a week to begin a degree in electrical engineering, I thought having a Linux OS on my system would be a good move.

My HD is 455 gigabytes right now...I was wondering if people had any suggestions on how much I should shrink my C: drive to make room for Linux? And I'm thinking about installing Ubuntu, any other suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[junglebeast]

In the past I've found that it's easier to install windows OS first and then linux second. Personally I would recommend just using vmware to install a virtual linux OS, instead of dual booting.

 

[waht]

The simplest way is to install windows, then ubuntu. The installation interface on ubuntu is much nicer than on windows and it will repartition your drive easily. If you do it the other way then windows will remove GRUB boot loader which is better than window's.

You can also get a Gparted which is a free linux based boot CD that can independently repartition your drive to your needs, but most OS come with their own partition software.

 

[daniel_i_l]

I shrank my windows partition with gparted and then installed linux (fedora) on the remaining space. It worked perfectly. When you're finished you can configure GRUB so that it let's you choose between windows and linux at boot time.

 

[J Goodrich]

What size do you recommend that I make my partitions?

 

[daniel_i_l]

Do you want to make a separate partition to save data on independent of the operating system (so you'd have 3 partitions: windows, ubuntu and data)? Or will the two be completely separate?
If the former is true, than Ubuntu itself will only need about 5G for a full install with all possible packages. You might want to give it a little more depending on how much free space you have.
If the later is the case than it depends on how much you plan on storing in each one. Be careful with the windows partition though, you might loose data if you compress it to aggressively, so make sure that everything you have on it will fit in the new space with a little extra room. I'd recommend backing it up first.