Non Obvious Install

[NomadTW]

Ok so I have a laptop that I want to put ubuntu on, currently the laptop has vista on it.
I want the laptop to appear and act to the untrained eye as though it only has vista installed.
no grub loader loading
no default popping of any OS lists showing anything out of the ordinary on.
ideally to hide the ext3 partition so it doesn't show up in windows at all.
I would like it to just automatically boot to windows with no interaction, and perhaps a key to press during boot to choose to boot into ubuntu.

is any/all of this possible?

[Catalyst2Death]

You could do a normal install, and then exit grub to automatically boot to windows... (set wait time to 0, and make vista the default)

Why you would want to do this is beyond me, there would be no way to get into linux! Oh well.

[Partyboi2]

You can also change the

## hiddenmenu
# Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu)
#hiddenmenu

section of your menu.lst so that the grub menu is hidden at boot unless you press Esc.
To hide:

## hiddenmenu
# Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu)
hiddenmenu

[Catalyst2Death]

Note that the hidden menu option displays something like:

Booting to default operating system in 3 2 1 ...

[pieisgood4589]

You could use Wubi to install, (it's Ubuntu on your computer, but it acts like a Windows application- you can uninstall it with one click, it just takes a portion of your harddrive,) and set the Grub wait time to 0, or 1 second, so as you have enough time to press the "ESC" key to stop GRUB from booting. Then, put Windows first on your boot list so it will immediately boot into Vista afterwords. If you don't press "ESC," it'll just boot into Ubuntu. I'm not sure how to make it so it'll boot into Windows and only Linux by pushing a button, only vice-versa...?

[NomadTW]

ideally booting to ubuntu would be some way to make the computer actually see the ext3 partition as a seperate hard drive to boot from, so I could have two completely uninteracting operating systems that could be chosen by using the bios boot menu to choose where to boot from.

now i know that that is not actually a posibility, and installing a 2nd hard drive is not an option for a laptop.

but that's really where i'm hoping to go

the goal is if my boss were to pick up this laptop, power it on and do a light amount of poking around, making sure there's not porn, etc on the laptop, for her to not realize that ubuntu is installed unless she was specifically looking for it.

[Mark Phelps]

Ok so I have a laptop that I want to put ubuntu on, currently the laptop has vista on it.
I want the laptop to appear and act to the untrained eye as though it only has vista installed.
no grub loader loading
no default popping of any OS lists showing anything out of the ordinary on.
ideally to hide the ext3 partition so it doesn't show up in windows at all.
I would like it to just automatically boot to windows with no interaction, and perhaps a key to press during boot to choose to boot into ubuntu.

is any/all of this possible?

I have a laptop that has both Vista and Ubuntu on it, and I've experimented with what you want to do -- for different reasons, but with much the same result in mind.

I'm not an Ubuntu "expert", but I'll pass along what I've learned ...

1) GRUB. Menu is hidden, have to press Esc key to see it. Tried timeout of zero but the boot was too fast to allow me to press the key before the machine dropped into Vista. Had to end up allowing one second, and that displays the message on the screen about pressing the key.

2) Ubuntu file system. Routine usage of Vista will not "see" the filesystem because Windows (currently) doesn't understand Ext3 filesystems. So, Windows Explorer and other file manager tools will not show the Ubuntu partition. However ... the Disk Management console plugin shows ALL the partitions, hidden or otherwise, regardless of format. So, if the person using Vista knows about the console plugins, they will be able to find the Ubuntu partition(s).

3) Accessing your "private" stuff. You can search in this forum for details about adding and using passwords to prevent booting into Ubuntu (to prevent launching Ubuntu if the person does press Esc). That will at least keep folks out of the Ubuntu file system on a casual basis.

If they do get into Ubuntu (using a boot CD for example), you can encrypt files to prevent access. But, they will be able to discover those files, and encrypting files on a machine you use at work could be in violation of some IT "policy".

Better solution would be to keep your files on a plugin external drive -- but then, you have to physically protect that.

One final thought ... if you connect your machine to the internet at work, it's common practice today for companies to monitor internet usage -- and when they do so, they do it silently. While a history of accessing non-work-related sites is not likely to get you fired, on the other hand, IT policies are generally so vaguely worded, that such activity COULD be used to fire someone.

Hope some of this helps ...