Running Linux and Windows 7 on same computer ? How ?

[CaptHaddock]

The safest setup is to install 64 bit inux on the box, wiping out the Windows installation. Then install Vmware Workstation into linux. Then build vms with various windows and linux versions. Then, do not browse the internet with the base linux installation. The goal is to isolate browsing to avoid getting viruses or other malware. For routine browsing it's best to use a linux vm since that reduces the chance of viruses, although you should also run clamav, the linux anti-virus in all your linux installations. You can use a different vm to login to your bank and brokerage accounts. On that vm you should never browse to any site that you do not trust. Safety comes from isolating your internet activities. Since I like to watch movies, but don't trust downloaded movies or Popcorntime, I run those in a dedicated Windows 8 vm, keeping them well away from any data of value.

The other main benefit in running vms is that you can take snapshots to which you can revert at any time. So before applying updates or installing a new application or driver, you take a snapshot. Then if you find the new software causes problems you just revert to the snapshot and you are quickly back to a known, good state. This had saved me from headaches several times. Vmplayer is free, but I don't think it supports snapshots.

A windows vm will work fine for most applications, but not for Lightroom or other photo editors. For that you want to have a dual-boot installation with Windows and linux. If you install Windows first and then run a linux installation, linux will sort it out and provide a boot-time menu to select between the native windows or linux install. Then you can install Vmware Workstation into the linux installation.

It doesn't matter which linux distro as long as it's 64 bit since Vmware Workstation requires that. I like fedora.

[jay1980]

I run ubuntu under Virtual box on my notebook

https://www.virtualbox.org/

http://www.ubuntu.com/download

http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Ubuntu-on-VirtualBox is a nice set up guide

The ubuntu GUI is kind of clunky compared to windows 7 IMO but I mostly use the CLI on Linux/Unix. I can even run putty on my host machine and not even look at the GUI at all.

If you are not familiar with FTP commands it might be worth getting filezilla to move files between your Windows host and other Windows Virtual or physical machines and your Linux virtual machine

https://filezilla-project.org/

Unless your notebook is very high end I would go for the 32bit version of ubuntu desktop

The advantage of running a virtual machine over dual boot is both machines are up at the same time and you can network them together.

For example I download and check all my torrents or software downloads from sites I am unsure of on another Windows virtual machine, so if I download something bad that infects my virtual machine I just trash it and build a new one which takes about 15 minutes. I then can transfer the downloaded file via the virtual network once I am confident it is OK to my physical host machine as required.

hope that helps

[jay1980]

You can often download the Windows ISO's from the internet. I believe I've downloaded them from Microsofts website before but this was a long time ago so things might have changed recently.

Microsoft have stopped hosting older versions of windows on their website however youou can find downloads of all the Windows OS ISO's as well as many other OS's here:

http://getintopc.com/softwares/operating-systems/

of course to be legal you will need you will need a valid Windows activation code for the Windows OS version you download.

[BKKdreaming]

Thanks downloading the newest Hirens now,,,,,,

I hope I can make it portable on a USB stick as the stuck computer does not have a CD-DVD player

[jpinx]

Thanks downloading the newest Hirens now,,,,,,

I hope I can make it portable on a USB stick as the stuck computer does not have a CD-DVD player

If you are making a virtual machine, it is totally portable, you can even email it to someone Be aware that VirtualBox will need you to follow their protocol to register the machine from a different location, but it's not complicated. Also - if working from a USB stick, it is significantly slower due to the usb connection limitations.

[Richard W]

I thought that I was buying an Inspiron with Linus preinstalled, when I got it home It was a Windows 8.1.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/19609699

I am now very nervous about installing Linux or booting Linux on this computer.

Sounds reasonable. A few weeks ago I added Ubuntu 14.04 to a Windows 7 machine. I thought it would be straight forward. I installed Ubuntu 10.04, for dual boot, from an old Ubuntu live CD, and then went to upgrade. Nothing doing! I had to download an Ubuntu 14.04 live DVD, and reinstall from that. I saw the following warning:

Disable 'fast startup' for Windows 8 and above before installing Linux. Failure to do so will result in a bricked machine.

It seems that switching operating systems during hibernation is also a bad idea.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Richard W

[jacnl2000]

Many years ago I actually setup a multi-boot system ( Windows and Red Hat ) and it worked wonderfully well for many years. No bad experiences at all. Very first post of this thread still triggers the keyword "Grub" into my mind. Keyword Grub in combination with Red Hat yields following link for more reliable information and proper guidance ( this documentation contains a few important hints ):

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/s1-grub-whatis.html.

On the internet are also other tutorials available.

Good luck.

[Richard-BKK]

The first thing you have to check is how much free space you have on your hard drive, it doesn't matter if the space is currently occupied by the MS Windows partition.

Lets assume you have a 500GB hard drive in your notebook and MS Windows 7. plus programs and data files are around 120GB, that leaves you purely theoretical with 380GB. This not 100% real as the partition and formatting of a hard drive also takes some space. But anyway, you could split the hard drive into a dual boot system. For that we have to shrink the MS Windows partition.

To shrink the MS Windows 7 partition you have to go to Control-Panel → System-and-Security → Administrative-Tools and select Computer Management. If you have opened Computer Management you need to select Storage → Disk-Management. If everything is correct you see at that screen Disk 0 (System Reserved, probably 100MB NTFS) that one we not touch. On the right side next to System Reserved you see (C:) (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition).

If you click with the right mouse button on the window with (C:) (the window that has / / / / / in it) you get a few options, one of this options is to shrink the partition. Click on Shrink Volume and depending on how fast your computer and how fast your hard drive is it can take some time before you get the following screen. You now can shrink the partition / volume to the desired amount.

After this you can install one of the popular Linux versions from DVD or USB stick without any problem, all the modern Linux distributions automatically discover the MS Windows partition and as long you not deleted it during the install Linux will be on the same system. You can select MS Windows or Linux at the moment the computer boots.

In the case you not like Linux, cannot imagine it but it happens, you can remove the Linux partition with the same MS Windows Disk-Manager and get MS Windows boot only by running BootRec.exe /fixmbr from a Command Prompt in MS Windows. (start a command prompt by Search programs and files type cmd)