Laptop recommendation?

[oygle]

Thanks sudodus. I remember in other posts in this thread, that in the case of one HDD, I should not be concerned about having Kubuntu as the second partition.

In the case of 2 HDD's, can I now have Kubuntu as the primary HDD, and Windows 8.1 as the secondary ?

I do not have the media for windows 8.1, so I would have to do a complete "mirror" to backup up windows. I'm not keeping any data on win 8.1, only the OS. Kubuntu is used for all my data needs.

Because the single drive now is 1 TB, I'd like to be considering to just get a (say) 250Gb HDD for windows 8.1, and install it as the second HDD.

Thanks,

Oygle

[sudodus]

With two HDDs and one OS on each drive, you still have to point the boot to one of the drives (in UEFI/BIOS). I suggest that you point it to the drive with Kubuntu and let grub give a menu to select either Kubuntu or Windows.

If you want to 'mirror' Windows, alias clone it, you will probably have problems trying to squeeze it into a smaller drive. One option might be to shrink the main Windows partition (do it from within Windows), and use the unallocated space for a new partition, a data partition. If you want the data files (documents, photos, videoclips ...) to be available from both Kubuntu and Windows, use the NTFS file system. Otherwise ext4 is better (if you intend to use the data partition only from Kubuntu).

[oygle]

Thanks sudodus for your help. I only just found out that the laptop can only take one HDD, so I may have to have Windows/Kubuntu on the one HDD.

I may "wipe" the Windows 8.1, as I assume if the BIOS is set to legacy, then that gets around the UEFI issue/s. I will only use win 8.1 once every few months, so all the hassles of having dual book windows 8.1/Kubuntu are possibly not justified. I'm thinking of running WINE to run this software. If that works fine, I have no need of win 8.1 at all.

Thanks,

Oygle

[sudodus]

Good luck!

And please share your results

[oygle]

And please share your results

Thanks. I did go down the path of trying to obtain instructions from the Dell Forum. There is a sub-forum for Linux. Quite a few months ago, I posted there, but still no reply. I don't think that forum is very active. Anyway, here is one 'tip" I found from TimeSmall

Old question, but this still comes up via Google - so since I've now got it working, here's how...

There are two solutions do this:

1. Run the Windows .exe under 'wine' under Linux, and pass it the -writehdrfile command line option e.g.

tim@ermintrude:~/Downloads$ wine O760-A16.exe -writehdrfile
tim@ermintrude:~/Downloads$ ls -al O760-A16.hdr
-rw-r--r-- 1 tim tim 3017988 Oct 7 09:21 O760-A16.hdr

n.b. if the windows executable is unable to write the file (e.g. permissions), you get an unhelpful "check command line arguments" error message.

The other is to use the extract_hdr utility as detailed here:

http://linux.dell.com/files/libsmbio.../bios_hdr.html

I want to wipe Windows 8 on the laptop, and install Kubuntu 14.04. One reply I did get from another forum at Dell, was to buy a 64Gb USB, and use the Dell Backup/Recovery tool to back everything up first.

The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15 Series 3000, 3542

This is an interesting read and may be all I need ?? http://askubuntu.com/questions/22183...uefi-supported

[sudodus]

...
I want to wipe Windows 8 on the laptop, and install Kubuntu 14.04. One reply I did get from another forum at Dell, was to buy a 64Gb USB, and use the Dell Backup/Recovery tool to back everything up first.

The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15 Series 3000, 3542

This is an interesting read and may be all I need ?? http://askubuntu.com/questions/22183...uefi-supported

Installing an operating system is risky, so it is a very good idea to backup the current system and your personal files (pictures, documents ...) before starting. But I would prefer an external hard disk drive, which is more reliable than a pendrive.

That link may be all you need, but there are also other tips at

Try Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, ...) before installing it

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...n/FromUSBStick

There is a good wiki page about booting with UEFI, and a good tutorial thread, UEFI Installing - Tips.

[oygle]

Thanks sudodus, for the tips and links to articles. I do have an external drive, so I will use that for the backup.

I have tried Kubuntu on the Dell laptop. All I had to do was to disable Secure Boot in the BIOS. If that is any indication, I shouldn't have _too_ many problems.

Oygle

[sudodus]

Good luck

[weatherman2]

I often simply remove a new laptop's hard drive before I even boot Windows the first time. (Assuming the laptop's hard drive is easy to get to - sometimes it is.) Having a few spare hard drives for testing is really helpful! I also usually clone the original laptop drive's Windows to an image file using Clonezilla (save the large image file/directory to a USB/external drive), then test the clone by restoring it to the test hard drive I've swapped in. If I can boot the cloned Windows from the test hard drive, then I know I'll always be able to revert the original drive to factory settings if I ever need to, worst case.

A USB hard drive adapter or enclosure is also a handy tool to have around - often $10 USD or less for a generic one.

I was able to install Ubuntu 12.04.2 (when that was the newest) on my Acer netbook dual booting with Windows 8, leaving UEFI on. It was a bit of trial and error, but it still works, and although I only rarely boot Windows on it it's still nice to have when I need to (to test something out). I still boot the OS of choice not using Grub but using the F12 key to get a boot menu. Having a Ubuntu live boot USB that includes boot repair is also helpful to have around. Maybe as of Ubuntu 14.04 things are easier now with secure boot/Windows co-existence.

[oygle]

Thanks weatherman2. Your comments on using external drive or USB got me thinking. For me, having Win 8 is a bit of a waste. All I really need it for is the Selectronic SP pro software. It only runs on Win platforms. Yes, I have considered using WINE and run it under that, but the same software is used to configure our inverter. We sure don't want to be without power.

1. All 'data' files are on a desktop, running Kubuntu 14.04
2. The laptop is only used for the Selectronic software I have no use of runing anything else on a M$ platform.

So, I can now ponder/consider ..

A. Use Clonezilla on windows 8 laptop, and write it to a USB drive (say 64 Gb)
B. Also copy it to an external drive.
C. Wipe the Win 8 on the Dell laptop
D. Install Kubuntu 14.04 on the laptop. Allow Kubuntu to take up the complete HDD.
E. Use Kubuntu on the laptop for a month or two, just in case there are any "gotchas"

F. Backup all 'data' fiiles from desktop to external drive
G. Restore files from "F" to the Dell laptop (there may be some install issues with some Kubuntu apps, no worries, I have done a few 'clean' *Ubuntu installs).
H. When I need to run the Selectronic software, just plugin the USB drive and boot from that.

The only problem I see is keeping the USB drive 'up to date' with MS updates. The HUGE/BIG plus though, is having the Dell laptop ONLY for Kubuntu.