Linux Mint Forums

hi there,

i'm currently using linux mint 14 nadia 32 bit on an old white apple macbook and have been really impressed and want to keep using it...

however, i've just ordered a new laptop, lenovo G580 i5-3210M 6GB 500GB DVDRW 15.6" which i intend to install linux mint over windows 8 and have two questions:

1. should i download the 32bit or 64bit?

2. the laptop comes with a rescue button which reinstalls windows 8 from a dedicated partition - will it be easy to replace windows 8 within linux mint but leave the rescue partition alone in case there are any issues and i have to restore before phoning a help desk


first post so hopefully its in the right forum and all help will be greatly appreciated

Cheers

Cam

1/ 32bit won't see all that 8Gb ram - so 64bit, it is
2 / probably should just leave win8 alone & dual_boot with it.

- if there is a D: drive on that PC, then install mint into that partition.
- let mint format & take the partition over . . .

either way, - definitely keep that rescue partition.

If the rescue partition works the same way as it does on most other OEM-built PC's and laptops that I have played with in the past, they use a BIOS-level access to the recovery partition and all that does is use the ghost image on the recovery partition to overwrite the contents of the C: partition completely.
Meaning that the minute you use the recovery, everything (user data, music, documents, downloads, linux installed anything stored on the C: drive) will be sent to oblivion never to be seen again. Whether it would destroy another partition I don't know, I would imagine that as it's a disk image, resizing C: and then installing Mint on /sda3 or /sda4 would still not be a safe bet when it came to restoring the disk image as it would either kill the new partition structure to fit the factory image back on or fail due to lack of space.
Based on that, I'd say you're gonna lose Mint any which way you try to use that factory restore option so I would just wipe the C: partition and install Mint there. Wouldn't alter the partition structire though, maybe just a reformat to ext3/4?

Thanks, hopefully i'll never need to use that button.

i take it then when it comes to installing mint, i can go into the partition manager bit and there will be two partitions? (1 small one with the rescue files and another much larger one with win8 and free disk space?)

can i just delete that win8 partition and ask mint to install on the free space or does that mean i'll have to manually set up the different partitions myself?

You can shrink the Win 8 partition a lot and then Mint 14 can automatically install into free space with the "Install alongside Windows / other OS" option. But you need to make sure that if your Windows is booting in UEFI mode, then the Mint DVD needs to be booted in UEFI mode too (not in legacy mode). You may also need to disable UEFI Secure Boot in your BIOS.

If you delete the Windows partition you may not be able to "install alongside other OS" since there's probably no other OS anymore. Some recovery partitions, however, (those on HP laptops for example) are seen as an operating system too, so those allow using the "install alongside" option for automatic installation into the free space, even if there is no Windows. I do not know how that works with Lenovo's recovery partitions.

@ Pierre: PAE is enabled by default in Mint 14 32-bit so RAM is no longer an issue. Anyway, you can use 64-bit edition on your computer and you have plenty of RAM, so 64 is preferred indeed.

brill,

thanks for all your help. i've looked up on youtube how to shrink the partition in win8 so i know how to do that and will select the install alongside option.

cheers

Cam

Pierre wrote:1/ 32bit won't see all that 8Gb ram - so 64bit, it is

<facepalm>

Wrong.

The stock PAE kernel will recognise all of that RAM. The only thing the poster will not be able to do with a 32bit OS is run any application or process that requires more than 4GB, which is the 32bit limit. Furthermore, the poster clearly wrote 6GB, not an imaginary 8GB.

<<But you need to make sure that if your Windows is booting in UEFI mode, then the Mint DVD needs to be booted in UEFI mode too (not in legacy mode). You may also need to disable UEFI Secure Boot in your BIOS.>>

how do i do that?

the more i read about this UEFI the more i'm getting concerned

someone said fedora 18 works on UEFI out of the box, but I really want to use mint so any clues on this would be great

thanks

Cam

You could launch GParted from the Mint live USB to see if the disk already has an EFI System Partition (I don't just know how such a partition looks like in GParted, don't have a UEFI system with Linux at hand). If there is no such partition, Windows boots in legacy mode and you'll need to boot Mint that way too (from the computer's boot menu usually accessible with F8, F11 or F12). If there is an EFI System Partition then you'll need to boot Mint with UEFI too.