Dual Boot: Mint first or Windows

[castletonia]

I got a cheap used computer so my daughter can get used to using it. There is no operating system installed but it does have a Windows XP COA. I want to put Windows on there because that is what here school has. If I am going to setup a dual boot, is it better to install Windows first or Mint first?

[xenopeek]

Windows first is generally easier. Linux plays well with others, Windows doesn't

If you want to install Linux first, that is fine also. Just be sure to create a separate NTFS partition from Linux before you install Windows. Because if there is a NTFS partition, Windows asks to use that. If there are partitions, but none are NTFS, Windows will just wipe the entire hard disk...

[sagirfahmid3]

When using the Windows XP installation disk, you can manually allocate partitions. If it's a really old computer, dedicate the majority of space for Linux (Mint LXDE is best on old hardware, but to a certain extent. If it's REALLY ancient, you might want to try putting SliTaz on it; boots up in 35 seconds smack on a AMD Duron 900MHz, 168MB RAM).

If you want to install Mint first and Windows later, do as Vincent said:
1. On the Mint live cd/dvd, when you are installing and get to the 4th step, click on "Something else" or "Advanced" option.
2. Click on the harddrive (which is probably called /dev/sda#) and delete any extra partitions (if any exist) so you have one huge partition.
3. Click "Add" and make a 1GB (1024MB) swap file (this is similar to Windows' pagefile.sys). Click on the dropdown menu and click "linux-swap".
4a. Now whatever space is remaining on the harddrive, dedicate half to Linux and half to Windows (if its a small harddrive, dedicate two-thirds of it to Linux ).
4b. Now, for the Linux partition, you can put any of these filesystems: ext2, ext3, ext4. Each latter filesystem is better than the preceding one from what I know, so pick ext4 (If you want to learn more about the similarities and differences, go to this page Clicky.) From the dropdown menu, choose ext4 filesystem, and for the mount point choose "/"{slash} or "root" is what it means.
5. Now hit next and wait for installation to finish. Thats how you install Mint, and most all kinds of Linux OSes in general.

Now, onto the Windows XP installation:
1. When the 10 page license agreement comes, ignore it and hit (F8? I think) whatever it says to press to agree to the license agreement.
2. When the partitioning page comes, select the unallocated space, and press enter.
3. Format it as NTFS if you are worried about not being able to use or store files single larger than 4GB; otherwise, choose FAT32.
4. Wait 1 hour for it to install (go get and eat lunch), and restart, and you're done.
5. That's how you install Windows XP.

Big issue after installing Windows XP: the bootloader will not recognize Mint and give you a choice to boot into it.
1. Download and install EasyBCD http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/
2. Open the program as an administrator. Click on "Bootloader setup".

3. Now click on the tab called "Linux/BSD". Click on the drop-down menu and select "GRUB2". For the name, type in Linux Mint. Now hit "Add entry".

4. After you click "Add entry", restart your computer and you will be presented with an option of booting into Windows XP or Mint.
5. That concludes the Windows/Mint dual-boot tutorial.

Enjoy Linux!

[HughT]

Definitely install windows first. If you install it second, it'll take over the Master Boot Record so that you can't boot to Mint. So the first thing to do is use your Mint in LiveCD mode to create the necessary partitions. Use GParted, which is on the menu Applications/Administration. One partition will be NTFS for Windows. I'd suggest you consider creating three partitions for Mint. One for the Operating System itself, 10Gb is plenty, another for Swap - generally the same size as your RAM, and the third for your own saved files i.e. 'Home'. That way, if you should ever need to re-install the Operating System, your files won't be touched (but of course you should really back up). Once you're up and running, you can create a link from Home to your third partition. Mint will automatically create a grub menu so you can choose whether you want to boot to windows or Mint.

Although I recognise that you have no wish to confuse your daughter by having her use a PC with a different appearance to that used at school (but you never know, she might think it's cool), note that Libre Office can both read and create MS Word documents - and Excel & Powerpoint.

[sagirfahmid3]

You don't really HAVE to have 3 partitions; that just makes people more confused. And even if you DO make 3 paritions, it's not like all your programs and stuff are gonna be installed because they aren't--only the programs' properties and config files will be preserved. SO you might as well have 2 partitions instead: 1 swap, and 1 root "/" and thats it.

If you need to back things up, you can use APTOnCD to back up any packages, but it's not going to work if you delete the packages cache (as in sudo apt-get clean). But what's more important is your personal documents; programs in Linux can be installed easily enough--use the Synaptic Package Manager or Software Manager--as it's not Windows where you have to search all over the place and most of the times you cant even trust half of the things you download. Another excellent program to make a full backup is Relinux, look it up on Google. I've used this program many times on Mint. Remastersys I cannot comment on as it did fail me badly.

[Aging Technogeek]

As Hugh T said, if you install Mint first and Windows second, even with a preformatted ntfs partition, Windows will write its bootloader to the mbr and destroy Mint's Grub loader.

There is away to fix this. Use the second procedure discussed here

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2?action=show&redirect=GRUB2#Reinstalling_GRUB2

to reinstall Grub to the mbr using the Mint live DVD.

[castletonia]

Thanks for all the info. The computer has a 1.7GHz P4 with 256mb ram (upgradeable to 1gb) which I know Mint LXDE can handle I'm just hoping XP will run. I only have $20 invested and don't really want to invest the money for old PC133 memory as its expensive so hopefully this works otherwise.

[xenopeek]

If you're not upgrading memory, I'd have a look at suggestions for Linux distros for older machines. 256 MiB will be limiting what you can do on LXDE also (though not as much as with GNOME or KDE). viewtopic.php?f=61&p=528880

[sagirfahmid3]

Castleonia, I would suggest you get SliTaz instead (no, I'm not betraying Linux Mint. As far as I'm concerned, Linux is Linux, no matter what it's called). I installed Mint LXDE on my old AMD Duron 900MHz, 168MB SDRAM, and it took a whole 10 minutes to start up and have everything loaded. Then I put SliTaz on it instead and it booted up in a really short time 30-40 seconds max with the desktop loaded. I want for you to try it out, you might like it!
http://www.slitaz.org

This is my suggestion to include Synaptic in SliTaz. Seems like they are very much against it!: http://forum.slitaz.org/topic/suggestio ... positories

[castletonia]

I tried SliTaz once in the past but I could never get it to boot. I will give it another look though. If nothing else I will upgrade the memory. I really like Mint and the community, and it is what I am most familiar with which is why I prefer to stay here.

If I am unable to get SliTaz running or just don't prefer it, are there any tutorials as to what I can disable and/or remove from Mint LXDE to lighten it up?

[xenopeek]

You are very much welcome to stay of course Perhaps Linux Mint 9 Fluxbox will run more easily if Linux Mint 9 LXDE is too heavy (and yes, I'd go with Linux Mint 9 if you are keeping 256 MiB RAM): http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=65

[SimonTS]

I would second the recommendation for Mint 9. When I last had Mint installed as my main system (unfortunately work stops me from getting the time to use it much nowadays) I was running Mnt 9. I found it to be much more stable and quicker than 10, 11 or 12 even though I did have to put in some work to get the modern hardware running at first.

[castletonia]

OK, so I got everything updated on the Windows XP side and was fortunate enough to be given another stick of memory so now I have 512mb total. Planning on installing Mint 9 LXDE but was wondering what anyone thought about trying either Mint 9 XFCE or LMDE XFCE? I have never tried the Debian edition before so I am not sure if that will make anything more complicated?

Also, with Mint 9, would I need to do a kernal upgrade or change repositories? Thanks in advance.

[HughT]

I can't really comment on the pros and cons of Mint 9 and and LMDE, having used neither. But Mint 9 was based on a 'testing' version of Debian (via Ubuntu) whereas LMDE is based directly on a 'stable' version of Debian. The former might be considered suitable for general home users, tolerant of the slim chance of a bug, while the later for business or other users requiring absolute rock-solid stability.
A fresh install of either would load with the appropriate kernel and repositories.

[castletonia]

I decided to install Mint 9 XFCE since I upgraded the memory to 512MB. The computer boots up in probably 30 seconds or so and is running well only using about 160mb of ram on idle. Plus Mint is able to give me the correct screen resolution of 1440 x 900 whereas Windows XP does not even offer the correct resolution even with all drivers installed and up to date. Got a feeling I may just delete the Windows XP partition at some point probably sooner than later.

Thanks to all for the help.

[DrHu]

I think it can depend on the age of your daughter; for example for younger kids using the same OS as their school just makes it simpler

However, children learn quickly and just as it is good to be multilingual, instead of unilingual; since that facilitates better learning, just like arts/music and physical activities do also..

There is no real reason to limit your daughter to only what the school wants
--for whatever business reasons they may have

So a multiboot with windows OS first (1st hard drive, 1st partition, the c:\ in windows lingo..)
--and there are lots of tutorials/guides for that process; I usually look at APC mag for the general guide/walkthrough of this..

Get the gist before running it..

http://apcmag.com/the_definitive_dualbo ... bystep.htm
http://apcmag.com/superguide_the_open_s ... ubuntu.htm

Another approach, not multiboot/dual-boot
It is usually the case that the 2nd OS does not get used, since the 1st OS naturally starts first; so that multibooting doesn't often lead to using another OS, like Linux..

[walksin2trees]

my first run at dual-booting
I installed XP first and got it working, used it for a few weeks before I got around to installing Mint LXDE 12.

I think this is how things went
After I installed the bootloader to root, I didn't get a boot-list, so I reinstalled and this time put the bootloader on the xp partition, I got a boot-list on first run of Mint, but after that no more, so I ran Start-up Manger and now get a boot-list, but XP still won't load. Instead, after a blank screen, the boot-list reappears. I can boot any of the mint options just fine.

Did I screw up the windows boot?
should I reinstall with the bootloader on root instead and run Start-up Manager?
Can I just edit the boot-list script and fix it?

[HughT]

Hi walksin2trees,
all you need to do is repair grub as follows: from a live CD

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt

replace X and Y with the appropriate drive and partition for Mint, probably sda2

Code: Select all

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdX

note - there's a gap between =/mnt and /dev, and no partition number after sdX
re-boot into Mint then

Code: Select all

sudo update-grub

you can check which is your Mint partition by

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -lu

hope this helps

[Pierre]

4. Wait 1 hour for it to install (go get and eat lunch), and restart, and you're done.

allow the rest of the day to install the <many> updates

[walksin2trees]

Hi walksin2trees,
all you need to do is repair grub as follows: ...
...Hope this helps

You sure? Mint loads fine, XP is what's not loading
I can try it, but I did

Code: Select all

sudo update-grub

from within my installed Mint and it built the same exact boot list as before

Perhaps this will provide an additional clue as to what's wrong:
looking at the tutorial linked a few posts ago,

Windows XP Pro

is what's listed in their resultant boot list
whereas my bootlist entry reads

Windows NT/2000/XP (loader) on /dev/sda1

IF grub is supposed to detect and list the precise version of the Windows OS (Windows XP Pro)
THEN this says to me that grub is detecting that there is a Windows OS, but for some reason isn't able to resolve the location of the Windows boot files, or possibly some other conflict.

That tutorial doesn't go over installation using the "Something Else" option which is what I had to use since the "along-side" option did not list the harddisk I wanted to install it to (even though it was mounted)