duel booting help

[gwb21471]

I have windows 8 pro installed on my first hard drive and on my second hard drive i like to install kubuntu 13.04. Now will my windows 8 let me do duel booting. Both drives are sata drives and i also have a sata dvd drive too. I just don't want to try to do it and my windows 8 get screwed up on me. Well thanks for any help i get.

[Teunis]

A lot of tips have been published here about this issue, just do a search for dual boot and UEFI.
Note: it is dual witha an a, it's got nothing to do with noblemen killing each other in an honourable way...

[gwb21471]

My computer doesn't have uefi on it. it's a old 775 socket motherboard. with 3 sata and one ide on it and a quad core cpu.

[Teunis]

Then it's no problem what so ever.
Just boot Kubuntu from a live CD/DVD or (these days) a USB drive and follow the menu.
Point to the disk where you want to install Kubuntu, partition it and start the installation.

Partition it as in preferably make at least three partitions, a / (root) of about 15 GB, a swap equivalent or 150% of your RAM and a /home where all your user data will reside.

Please make sure you understand the Linux way of disk names, what is a C drive in Windows is the sda, partitions on it will show up as sda1, sda2 etc.
Consequently the D drive is sdb, etc, etc.

Just make sure you don't install over the Win* partition(s)

You can get a good grasp of what is available on your system by first booting into a Live Kubuntu session and then starting up the Partition Manager, it'll show you all disks and their partitions in a nice graphical layout, including the correct names.
Personally I would use this partition manager to (re)partition the disk before starting the install.
If done this way you can during the install process select Manual Partitioning and point to the ready-made drive and partitions.

[gwb21471]

ok i going to use the entire second hard drive for linux witch well be 149gb hard drive. Keep my first hard drive for windows 8. Thanks for the help.

[Snowhog]

Might I suggest/recommend that you obtain/burn a LiveCD of GParted. Use it to do the prep on the second HDD -- to create/format the desired partitions. Then install Kubuntu. Why? There have been (some) issues (in the past) with the partitioner used within the installation. Having the HDD already partitioned makes the installation a lot easier (and safer).

[sithlord48]

i agree with teunis' formating suggestion.

that way incase you trash your system (via mistakes or upgrades to upstable) you can always reinstall and just format the root partition and re use the /home partition with same user name (??and pass if encrypted??) and you will keep your configuration it will speed up the setup up process alot since you don't have to resetup special configurations for programs, just reinstall them .

you might also want to be sure to install the bootloader to the root of the linux driver (should be sda or sdb) and change your primary boot disk to the linux one . this will minimize the chance of having windows 8 problems after install since you will not be altering that disk at all. the default boot manager (GRUB) should automaticly detect your windows install and add it as a boot option.

[oshunluvr]

A lot of tips have been published here about this issue, just do a search for dual boot and UEFI.
Note: it is dual with an a, it's got nothing to do with noblemen killing each other in an honourable way...

OK, not honorable, but installing windows is always a duel!