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Windows 7 & Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” – Dual Boot Install
By sparky | November 1, 2009
Windows 7 is fresh out in the wild.
Following close behind is Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala.
What better oppertunity to
1. Do a clean install of Windows 7 and
2. Test the dual-booting ‘ease of setup’ inbuilt into Ubuntu.
I started with Windows 7. It installed in 15 minutes quite happily. One Criticism: It didn’t ‘automatically’ find and install drivers for my Broadcom PCI-Gigabit Network Card; but it was ok – I simply plugged in the onboard network and Windows downloaded the drivers for the Gigabit Network Card in 30 seconds.
Next, I tried the “Wubi Installer“. I tried the default “Download and fetch Ubuntu from the internet” option. It started to download the AMD-64 bit version. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this was the typical 64 Bit version of Ubuntu, but because I read ‘AMD’ in the name, and I’m running an Intel system, I thought this could potentially lead to a bad outcome. I now understand that the Ubuntu labeling of this distribution as AMD-64 is merely a reference to the 64 Bit Extension set that was developed by AMD – and fully compatible with Intel systems. If I’d known that at the time, I probably would’ve proceeded with it.
As it was, I cancelled the auto download, and booted the system from the 9.10 Karmic bootable disc which I’d burnt earlier.
When it booted, I was faced with the standard questions:
I was after the second. After selecting it, it went through the usual motions of asking where you lived, time zones, keyboard type: But then the big, hairy one – How do you want to install Ubuntu?
There are a few options:
Now, here was where it became tricky, and this is only from a User Interface perspective – At the bottom is the slider to decided what percentage of the drive you want to allocate to the first partition (in my case, dedicated to Windows 7 use), but so far as I can tell, that has to do with the FIRST point Install them side by side, choosing between them at startup.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I would’ve put the slider under this particular option, so as to show a link between them; particularly since neither of the other two options have any relevance or association with the slider.
Insanity encouraged me to report it as a ‘bug’ – so I did. It’ll be interesting to see the comments, and what comes of it.
Once it had finished the installation and the computer rebooted, I was presented with a newer GRUB bootloader to what I have seen in the past. It’s up to GRUB-2 version 1.97 Beta 4.
Ubuntu is set to the default first boot (though this can be changed in the GRUB settings), along with the other alternate boot options, with Windows coming in at the bottom. When you first boot Windows after this installation process, it runs a CHKDSK to ensure the consistency of the system files, and disk drive. This is because when Linux does it’s partitioning, it messes with Windows mind (basically, Windows remembers the original size of the drive, and suddenly things have changed – so it makes sure that everything is still intact).
Edit: I replicated the install process and the setup on my laptop: To my surprise, Windows did not require a CHKDSK upon it’s first boot post Ubuntu install / GRUB writing to the boot record. I thought that was most interesting.
I’ll be following up with some reviews and thoughts on how the two systems behave, and a comparison / contrast of the two in the coming days. Stay tune!
Topics: General | 7 Comments »
November 10th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
I’m genuinely surprised that you didn’t know that AMD64 is the generic name for any 64/32 hybrid processor system. Even MS labelled their folders this in XP x64.
January 6th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
i used ubuntu and have confusing to dual it with w7
January 6th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
blog2man – I’ve not installed Ubuntu first, and then windows 7. In a lot of the earlier versions of Ubuntu, it was always found to be easier to install windows first, because linux plays better with windows, than windows does with linux.
Back up your data, wipe the drive, install windows 7, and then Ubuntu.
Failing that: What specific problems are you having dual booting?
February 12th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
I am also planning on this type of install on a new build. How has the experience been so far. Also, thank you for your blog.
February 25th, 2010 at 6:48 am
Old Leafs – The experience has been fine.
My laptop I use for work, and have to work primarily within the Windows environment. But whenever I’m programming, I’m using Ubuntu.
One thing I love is that both operating systems can be put into ‘hibernation’ / ‘sleep’ modes and when you wake the machine up, whichever you choose to boot from will work
March 22nd, 2010 at 9:09 am
I’ve done this thousands of times already, it worked every time. I did mess with the GRUBloader, so I only see 2 options (4 on my desktop PC, 7+Ubuntu+Gentoo+Arch).
This tutorial explains exactly what to do, and it’s followable. Thank you to help the beginners/noobs in this.
May 7th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
I’m pretty much impressed with the stability of Windows 7. It is better than windows Vista which hogs my memory and cpu.*.’