Putting Kubuntu on a Windows PC

[pseudonym_anon]

I have an Xp machine with a partitioned hard drive, C currently runs XP and to date, D has been used to store documents.

I have booted Kubuntu from CD and clicked Install, but it does not seem to give me a choice of where to intall to.

How do I make it install to my D- Drive, so that I can dual boot?


Thanks.

[JohanLingen]

Re: Putting Kubuntu on a Windows PC

There should be an option in the installation wizard to do a manual configuration of partitions. There you can delete the D: partition and create new ones (I'd suggest three: root (/), user partition (/home/) and swap).

P.S.: make sure you make a backup of valuable data, just in case...
P.S.2: make sure you do not check the 'format' option for the windows partition!

[Detonate]

Re: Putting Kubuntu on a Windows PC

And just so you avoid some problems that some posters have had recently, I would suggest that you run chkdisk , select to fix problems, and defrag on those disks before starting. Then be sure and shut down windows normally using the shutdown procedure.

[tomp01]

Re: Putting Kubuntu on a Windows PC

I have an Xp machine with a partitioned hard drive, C currently runs XP and to date, D has been used to store documents.

I have booted Kubuntu from CD and clicked Install, but it does not seem to give me a choice of where to intall to.

How do I make it install to my D- Drive, so that I can dual boot?


Thanks.

I would recommend installing a separate hard drive and putting Kubuntu onto it, it makes life a lot easier if there are any problems.

[Qqmike]

Re: Putting Kubuntu on a Windows PC

Tried and true method ...
BEFORE using the Kubuntu Live CD installer,

use GParted Live CD:

GParted: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php
GParted how-to: http://www.howtoforge.com/partitioning_with_gparted

to do this:

Partitioning—how to, Rog131:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3090704.0

[pseudonym_anon]

Re: Putting Kubuntu on a Windows PC

OK, not really sure where to go with this now.

Are you all saying that although I have 2 partitions on my hard drive (C & D) I cannot install Kubuntu successfully without loosing A) my original partition and B) My Windows install.

[Detonate]

Re: Putting Kubuntu on a Windows PC

Some terminology clarifications. Kubuntu (Linux) does not unserstand "C" and "D" drive in the same manner as windows. It recognizes the first hard drive on you system as sda. Then it will see two partitions on that drive, probably as sda1 and sda2. There may be more if you have a hidden recovery partition installed by your computer's manufacturer. Kubuntu does not use the same file system as windows, so it can't be installed in either of those partitions. To install Kubuntu, you will need to create two more partitions on the hard drive. One will be for the operating system, the other will be for the swap file. The swap file is similar to the windows pagefile, but in linux it is kept on a separate partition. If you tried to install Kubuntu on what you call your "D" drive, it would require that you reformat that drive to a file system for Linux, and you would lose all of your date you have on that drive. Of course, if you have no data on that drive, then you could reformat it and install Kubuntu there. I would suggest that before you begin the install, you download and burn a CD with Gparted on it, and use that to create your two new partitions. You will probably need to shrink one, or maybe both of your existing partitions to make room for the new ones. Gparted is a partiton mangement tool that easily lets you set up your hard drive partitions. It can be found here.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php


After you have successfully installed Kubuntu, you may need some help getting those windows drives mounted so that you can access them through Kubuntu. So post back.

[pseudonym_anon]

Re: Putting Kubuntu on a Windows PC

All the data from "D" ghas been moved to an external drive. So I can re-format "D".

Does it have to be NTFS or FAT32?

Once re-formatted, will Linux install, or do I need to do more?



Thank you

[Detonate]

Re: Putting Kubuntu on a Windows PC

You can use Gparted to reformat the partition, which will most likely be sda2 or sda3. You will be formatting it to a linux file system, neither NTFS or Fat32 will work. The most used these days is ext3. Gparted will do that for you . You will also have to create a small partition for the swap file. Usually this is about twice your installed memory in size, but it doesn't really have to be that big if you have a large memory. 2GB wil handle about any situation. After formating, you will designate the large drive as "/" and the small new swap partition as "/swap" . Don't worry, this is all done through the Gparted interface. As long as you are careful not to reformat the partition with windows on it, you can't screw things up so bad we can't fix them. After getting the partitions the way you want them, then reboot with the live Kubuntu CD and you should be able to install Kubuntu.