I’ve been following this forum for a year or so, and am impressed with the level of support giving to noobs (like me).
Now I’m ready to take the plunge to move to Linux from Win10, and would appreciate your comments and suggestions.
Here’s what I have:
BaseBoard Asus Z87-A
Intel Processor Core i5-4570 @ 3.20GHz, 4 Cores
BIOS Mode: Legacy
8 GB RAM
Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Drives: (all are formatted as NTFS)
Drive Device Partition Size Contains
Letter Type Style
C: SSD MBR 500GB Win10 boot disk, programs
E: HDD GPT 500GB Media files (pics, videos). About 85% full.
F: HDD MBR 500GB User documents. About 1/2 full.
I plan to set up a dual-boot system with LMDM as my primary system to boot, and Windows as the alternate.
I plan install another 500GB SSD for my Linux installation.
The user files for me and my wife are currently in folders named F:\home[me] and F:\home[wife]
I plan to use the existing drive\folder F:\home as my Linux /home mount point, and I want to be able to access & use the files from either LMDM or Win10, thus retaining the current NTFS format…
This is what I think I must do. Please critique and give any advice you think I should have.
Backup drive C. I plan to use an image backup, using Win7 Backup and Restore, so if anything goes wrong I can restore the image.
Convert drive C from MBR to GPT using Microsoft’s mbr2gpt.exe tool.
Install the new SSD.
Q: Do I need to disconnect my Win10 drive (C:) at this point? I’ve seen conflicting advice.
Install LMVM on the new SSD. Should I let the installer partition the drive as it thinks best, or do you have any recommendations for what partitions to make and their sizes?
Thanks,
Ken
Indeed very wise decision!
Also do backup your personal data!
You may easily reinstall Windows if things go really wrong, but probably can’t reproduce photos from your last birthday if they are lost
You mean LMDE? (Linux Mint Debian Edition)
That’s a great choice!
I doubt that will work.
Linux doesn’t call drives just letters and :, rather it names drives like sd[a…z], and adds a number wich refers to the partition. So if you look at /dev in filesystem, you will find sda (which refers to the whole disk the kernel found at boot as the first disk), full path of it is /dev/sda. Then /dev/sda1 refers to the first partition on that disk, /dev/sda2 to the second, and so on.
There won’t be something like ‘F:’. I do not recommend to use a partition formatted to non-linux-native filesystem for /home.
Instead, you can split up your current ‘F:’ into 2 partitions for example, if the order of the disks are the same under Linux, it will be /dev/sdc.
/dev/sdc1 can be your original F: after shrinking that partition, and /dev/sdc2 can be the host of your /home, formatted to ext4. It could be other Linux-native filesystem too, but ext4 is a mature and robust thing.
When specifying the partition to mount in /etc/fstab it is safer to refer to it by its UUID, so if disk configuration changes for whatever reason (and /dev/sdc becomes /dev/sdb for example), the /home still gets mounted correctly.
Personally I would not disconnect, becaue I’m familiar with Debian already, and I feel comfortable looking for and identifying different disks and partitions via fdisk -l or lsblk and/or parted -l, so after installing Linux (and some configurations) OS-Prober could find Windows boot manager easily.
If the Windows SSD is an NVME SSD placed tightly between the grpahics card and CPU cooler (like in my desktop ), it may be very hard to access to disconnect. (Still possible though…)
So it depends on your habit, braveness, possibilities wether you want to disconnect any dirve for the time you install Linux.
It’s not necessary to disconnect it, it’s possible to safely install, format/wipe disks before install, move/resize partitions etc…
HOWEVER…
If you don’t disconnect precious disks and make a mistake during install, for example you wipe the wrong disk, you can easily ruin your existing Windows installation, or erase your existing precious data.
So it’s not a technical necessity to disconnect any drive before installing Linux and reconnect them afterwards.
It’s just a security measure to protect your current stored precious data, and working installation.
If you are absolutely sure, you won’t make any mistake, don’t disconnect them.
Right, I just can’t “decode” LMVM, but you can install Linux
Personally I think 500GB for a Linux system is HUUUUGE.
I have 32…56 GB system partitions depending on what’s planned to install there. My laptop with quite a few of installed apps for my everyday tasks here has 48GB system partition, filled up to approx 75%
I’d suggest you to create 64GB system partition -the root, aka / - (that 64GB should be enough for anyone - freely quoted after Bill Gates ) on that 500GB SSD, 240MB Fat32 for EFI, and the rest would be the /home. If that’s small, I’d simlink the “big data areas” such as documents, photos, videos, etc… to another partition/disk, but keep the lots of small files in the home of the users on the SSD. Such as ~/.cache, ~/.config and so on… actually this is what I do on all my systems.
Or just let the installer to do whatever it wants. It will be probably end up in a small EFI partition and a single big partition for the system ( / ) which will hold the /home too on the same partition.
That works too.
The benefit of having the system and the /home on different partitions is that you can reformat/reinstall the whole system without losing personal data.
So for example, a screwed up non-bootable system may get wiped, and install a new fresh instance into the same place, and all the user data are kept and will be intact, assuming the same partition is selected for /home during install (without formatting of course!!!), and the users are created using the same names and order (to match the uid an guid for all of them) as before…
Hi Klaroy,
Laszlo has given you good advice.
I just want to clarify the above… it is not a good idea to try and use one of your existing partitions as /home.
You should install all of Linux ( ie EFI partition, / partition, swap partition, and /home) on the new SSD.
If you want to access partitions on the F: drive, you can mount them after you get Linux running. You dont need to make a partition /home to access it.
I am assuming your computer is UEFI boot and that you can disable secure boot.
If that is right I would partition the SSD as follows
Use a GPT partition table
EFI partition fat32 512Mb boot flag
/ partition ext4 80Gb ( this is where linux is installed)
swap partition - 5Gb
/home partition ext4 200Gb
Leave the rest of the disk unused. You may want to install another Linux later on.
You can do the partitioning either with gparted on a USB drive, or you can let the installer for LMDE do it.
The one thing you have to be careful with is, when partitioning, make sure you identify the correct disk before writing the partition info to it.
When you do the install tell it to write grub to the new SSD. Then when you reboot, Linux should boot.
Then, in Linux do at the CLI sudo update-grub
and it it will check all the disks and should find Windows and add it to the grub menu.
Then reboot and the grub menu should show Linux and Windows, and you can choose to boot either from there.
@easyt50 … Howard can you check for us… does LM have os-prober enabled?
Regards
Neville
PS. I noticed you program in Fortran. I started with Fortran II.
Thanks! Lots of good advice there.
Yes, my fingers were goofy. For both LMDM and LMVM I meant LMDE.
LMVM is the name I gave to my LMDE virtual machine (Virtual Box) that I’ve been trying out. Virtual machines have been a very unpleasant experience, with many things not working, like sound, mouse, keyboard, missing window controls etc. I don’t expect to encounter these issues with LMDE on “metal”.
Both of my SSDs are SATA drives, and I’m comfortable under the hood of my machine, so unplugging my C: drive (or all of them) will not be problematic for me. Safety first! My reading on the topic suggested that unplugging my C: drive first was necessary to ensure that the GRUB dual boot setup would work properly.
My MB documentation has a “Boot Devices Control” section, with the options being [UEFI and Legacy OpROM] (default, selected), [Legacy OpROM only] and [UEFI only]. I don’t think I need to change anything here.
Secure Boot is enabled with OS Type being “Windows UEFI mode” selected.
The other option is “Other OS”. Its description says “Get the optimized function when booting … or other Microsoft Secure Boot non-compliant OS”
There is no option to “disable” Secure Boot, so I guess the “Other OS” option is equivalent to “disable”.
I’ve read quite a bit on this topic, and it remains confusing.
I’ve seen an item in the Linux Mint forum (https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=408351 and others) that say Secure Boot works with LMDE 6 (i.e. it IS compliant with Secure Boot).
So it seems that it should work with Secure Boot enabled OR disabled. I just want it to work so I can boot either OS.
Assuming this is correct (that LMDE 6 works with Secure Boot enabled), is there any advantage to disabling Secure Boot?
I’ll go with Neville’s recommendations re: partitioning as a starting point.
I am sorry I cant answer that. I have no experience with secure boot.
It sounds like you can try with it enabled. You will soon find out, and no harm done.
Use UEFI boot… the partitioning I recommended is for UEFI… it is not right for legacy boot.
By all means unplug both existing drives. The it will be easy to identify the new SSD disk to be partitioned.
When the install finishes, it is safe to replug them, before you do update-grub so it can find Windows.
@klaroy
My advice is to forget the W7 back up, save your data to a external drive, pull the W10 drive, disable secure boot, install a new SSD Sata drive, format and partition the drive and install Linux.
If you are keeping W10, for gaming, then forget Linux, I have a similar setup and board and it runs W11 just fine, just update that ram to at least 16G, even for Linux.
Linux will run well in 8Gb ram, but if you start doing things like VM or games the performance will decline. That is what @Daniel_Phillips means. I have an 8Gb machine as my spare. It runs Debian and Gentoo with no problems.
Ooops, my raspberry having 1G RAM began to feel ashamed
Agree, 16G is advisable, but 8G is fair enough for general usage. (My oldest son used an Acer Aspire having only 4G and it worked)
For Linux itself much fewer RAM is enough to work, just the apps, to do their jobs may demand more. Like a browser, which will fill up GB’s of RAM quickly while having many tabs open, and scrolling down endlessly on a fa ebook timeline …
Lmde when doing the installation does NOT ask if you want to put windows and linus side by side on your hard disk, unless you create a partition first and select that as the destination on install. It will just offer to wipe all the disk and no way back.
Linux mint is a great choice, but if you do want side by side, then linux mint cinnamon or mate ask at install where and they update the grub automatically to suit dual boot. Cinnamon and LMDE look and feel so much the same for and end user you may not notice the difference.
I use LMDE on all my machines and for clients, but have always made copies of files first just in case. I tend towards dropping windows totally but personal choice.
Does side-by-side mean in the same disk? @klaroy wants Linux on a separate disk.
I would be inclined to ignore side-by-side, whatever it means, and just do a custom install on the new SSD… then fix up the grub menu afterwards with update-grub.
These fancy automated options tend to cause trouble. They try to second-guess what you want and if they guess wrong …
Lots of good advice here. I can’t add anything constructive except to say that my most troublefree configuration (finally!) is my W11 machine (gaming console) which sits next to my Linux computer. Using a KVM, they share a keyboard, a monitor, and a mouse. No conflicts.
I don’t use any backup programs. I just copy all important data to an external drive, usually as soon as it’s received/created.
Two machines, not one. Try Newegg for a refurbished office machine under $100.
The advantage of Linux updating the grub it is automatically ready for both so much simpler than making a change at command line for a new user to Linux.
But cinnamon is easy for install almost the same questions as lmde but the bit about where to put it and easy to make a mistake thus wiping windows. Been there and got tee shirt and had to reinstall windows then Linux then user files then…
Easy now I just don’t offer windows as a solution it’s Linux or nothing no longer bothered if client goes elsewhere and pays lots more. Got to that age
Well yes, regular Mint will has the OS-prober, but I do not know about LMDE, but I would assume that it does.
@klaroy, you sure do bring back memories for me. My first install of Mint was about 5 years ago. I went the route of dual boot with Win 10. Did I wipe out Win 10? Yes. Did I re-install Mint? Yes, about 4 or 5 times. Re-installing was sometimes due to errors on my part and sometimes just to get a better feel for the install process.
But the advise about having a good backup of Windows and your personal data is excellent. I had a solid backup / restore program for Windows, so I did not mind trying to place both OS’s on the same disk.
Suggestions on memory size and partition size will vary from person to person. My root partition is only 27 GB and it’s only 3/4 full. Now I do not include swap, home, or Timeshift in the root partition.
And if you are not a power user, Linux will run fine in 4 GB, but of course more memory does not hurt.
Your hardware: your main board specifically. This link tells me it should work, but you might want to check further for any gotchas (such as wifi or sound not working properly). You didn’t mention any graphics card in your first post.
Amount of RAM should not be less than 4GB but preferably larger like 8GB or more .
With more RAM you can run multiple apps at the same time. 16 GB is great of course ,but i.m.h.o. not necessary unless you run multiple complex apps.
Correct, with you on that. Have 2 netbooks with 2gb in each but really only capable of xfce linux even then quite slow, but mother board prevents upgrades too old.
There is no WiFi or distinct graphics card on this machine. The CPU (Intel i5-4570) includes Intel HD Graphics 4600. Sound is also built-in on the MB (Realtek ALC892).
I don’t think I’ll know if there will be any issues until I get there :).
You will need to connect to the internet, suggest you take a ethernet cable or an external usb wifi key so you can connect and get latest updates or drivers as needed
Yes, I have a 1GB Ethernet connection to my router, so downloads are pretty quick.
It may take a few days before I get into this deeper.
Thanks for all the advice so far! I’ll let you know how it goes.
), it may be very hard to access to disconnect. (Still possible though…)
