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Ubuntu/XP dual boot

(5 posts)
  • Started 5 years ago by nrv1013
  • Latest reply from confusinglysimple
  • Topic Viewed 5325 times

nrv1013
Posts: 35

I'm think I'm going to try dual booting Ubuntu 7.04 with XP Home on my secondary laptop (with the eventual goal being to try a triple boot on my primary laptop which is running Vista/XP). But first things first...

How big should I make my Ubuntu partition(s)? There's only one 40 gb drive with 31.6 gb currently available. I don't plan to store a lot of data on this computer since I have two large external (FAT32) hard drives for that. I've seen recommendations of 5-10 gb for the system drive but I'm wondering if I shouldn't just give Ubuntu half the drive and give the rest to XP. Also, any recommendations on size for the swap partition?

And since I had difficulties with Vista/XP bootloaders, is there anything weird with Grub that I should try to avoid? Should I install it on the mbr of the XP root partition (since it's the system drive) or on the Ubuntu root partition?

Posted 5 years ago #
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Scott
Scott
Posts: 5618

It can be done, but the www.neosmart.net pages are down (temporarily?)

Search through the threads there for specific dual/triple boot instructions.

Easy BCD 1.7 was just released 2 days ago.

Posted 5 years ago #
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supermansghost
supermansghost
Posts: 350

It really depends what you are trying to do with the system, but I'd install XP first, and give it half the drive.

Then install Ubuntu, give a max of 1gb for swap, and then the rest for the primary ubuntu partition.

The benefit of doing it this way is that you don't need any boot edit tool, Ubuntu/Grub will handle it all for you.

Posted 5 years ago #
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confusinglysimple
Posts: 2

I'm completely new at all this, but I saw the forum thread for a dual-boot question with ubuntu and xp, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do. I'm a first year computer science student with no programming background, and I'd like the dual-boot to do my homework. If I understand, the swap partition you're referring to is to transfer files between the two o/s? Without starting from scratch (i.e. formating the hard disk, reinstalling xp, then installing ubuntu), how do I install ubuntu?

In the mean time, I'm playing around with Cygwin on my laptop, and the majority of the commands I use on the linux machines at school give me the 'command not found' error. Where should cygwin find these commands, and how do I put them there?

Thanks.

Posted 5 years ago #
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confusinglysimple
Posts: 2

And what's grub and BCD 1.7?

Posted 5 years ago #
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