What will happen in this install ...?

92b16vx · #1 19th July 2012, 08:19 AM

Howdy folks, been long time

so i have my laptop right now with windows 7 x64, and Ubuntu. i used the Wubu installer when I installed ubuntu and it created my bootloader to allow booting into either W7, or ubuntu. I have been testing the Fedora 17 live disc on the laptop, and it seems everything is good to go and I would like to go ahead and install. If I use the "Install" that the live disc has on the desktop, will it automatically recognize, and set up grub to allow booting into all three? Or will I need to do some magic?

***Gareth Jones*** · #2 19th July 2012, 04:57 PM

It should detect Windows and other installed-to-partition OSes automatically. I'm not familiar with Wubi, but apparently it installs Ubuntu into a volume image file stored in the Windows partition. Presumably it uses the Windows boot-loader to display a boot menu, in which case to boot it with GRUB you'll need to first choose Windows in the GRUB menu, then Ubuntu in the second menu.

92b16vx · #3 20th July 2012, 04:45 AM

Thank you

That sounds about like what I estimate would happen. My only issue is I can not lose the Windows partition. Would it be better to create a small partition for install, or let the disc do it's thing?

***Gareth Jones*** · #4 20th July 2012, 01:02 PM

The installer should give an option to install in the free space on the drive. Make sure you have enough free and unpartitioned space to use. The installer can resize existing partitions to make space, but if you do that make sure to back-up your files, as resizing partitions can go wrong. Just avoid the options to replace or upgrade existing OSes, or the option to use the whole disk!

The installer also has the option of manual partitioning within the installer, which you may prefer. In that case, create a root partition for the system (10–20 GiB, ext4, mounted on /), a swap partition (2xRAM), and a home partition (the rest, ext4, mount on /home).

Golf4Fun · #5 20th July 2012, 02:54 PM

Take a look at the partitions that were preinstalled by the laptop manufacturer. Some laptops have odd hard drive setups. There might be more than 4 primary partitions making installation difficult.

Using a live CD like Gparted or Parted Magic with gparted on it will display the partition setup for you.