I want to get a few blog posts out of the way as I have left off blogging until I had a suitable Syntax Highlighter plug-in for Windows Live Writer.
This morning whilst I am literally inside VS 2010 developing, the computer froze, restarted and then informed me that it could not find a valid boot sector…joy! Once this happened following my other computer blowing up and the laptop being on the fritz I thought I would finally take the plunge and get on with using Linux, more than that I want to use Linux and Windows i.e. Duel Boot.
Before I started however I needed to backup the files that I had on the hard drive which has just gone west, this hard drive is a PATA and all the external enclosures I have are for SATA. So one small purchase was an external enclosure for this which only set me back 17.00GBP, bonus. I have another of these PATA hard drive which I had previously tried to install CENT OS onto and it went wrong, period; so with this new hardware I was easily able to wire up and format, bang back into the desktop and boot from CD.
Installing Ubuntu next to Windows 7
IMPORTANT : Install Windows first. I have been told this in person and also read about it afterwards, please read up about the WHY? but either way, it is better with Windows first.
- Install Windows
- Go to Computer Management inside Administrative Tools
- Right click on your main volume which windows is installed on
- Select, Shrink Volume.
After the process calculates how much space it can reduce the volume by, you can select the size of the reduction and in turn giving the amount of space you will be left with on the new partition.
Once complete, restart your computer.
NEXT:
- Insert your Ubuntu disk which you download and burned the ISO to disk
- Close any dialogue it raises for the Auto Run and then restart your machine again
- This should now boot into Ubuntu automatically assuming you allow booting from CD/DVD in the bios.
- Select the second option which is to install Ubuntu and then follow through the steps until you get to the partition manager.
The top line should inform you that it has found WIndows 7 already on your computer, and beneath that it gives you an option to install Ubuntu side by side to this. This is the option you want and after selection continue and confirm all the changes to be written to disk. Continue through the confirmation dialogues until completion.
On Restart
After the above is complete you get a really useful boot screen where you can select to boot Ubuntu or Windows. I am well impressed with this and cannot believe I have not done this sooner.
I am a total newcomer to the Linux scene, but so far so good. One small thing which I would point out is the apparent lack of a desktop blog publishing tool with equal capabilities and extensibility as Windows Live Writer. But hey, reboot, load windows and blog there… for now lol!!
Cheers for now,
Andrew