How To Install Dual Boot Windows 7 And Linux

Rather than doing a step-by-step how-to guide to configuring your system to dual kicking, I'll highlight the important points. As an example, I will refer to my new laptop that I purchased a few months ago. I first installed Ubuntu Linux onto the entire difficult bulldoze, which destroyed the pre-installed Windows 10 installation. Later on a few months, I decided to install a unlike Linux distribution, so too decided to re-install Windows ten alongside Fedora Linux in a dual boot configuration. I'll highlight some essential facts to get started.

Firmware

Dual booting is not just a thing of software. Or, it is, but information technology involves changing your firmware, which among other things tells your car how to begin the boot process. Hither are some firmware-related issues to keep in mind.

UEFI vs. BIOS

Before attempting to install, make sure your firmware configuration is optimal. Most computers sold today accept a new type of firmware known as Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), which has pretty much replaced the other firmware known as Basic Input Output System (BIOS), which is often included through the mode many providers call Legacy Boot.

I had no need for BIOS, so I chose UEFI way.

Secure Kick

One other important setting is Secure Boot. This feature detects whether the boot path has been tampered with, and stops unapproved operating systems from booting. For now, I disabled this option to ensure that I could install Fedora Linux. According to the Fedora Projection Wiki Features/Secure Boot  Fedora Linux will piece of work with it enabled. This may exist dissimilar for other Linux distributions —I program to revisit this setting in the time to come.

In short, if yous find that you cannot install your Linux Bone with this setting active, disable Secure Kicking and try again.

Partitioning the kicking drive

If yous choose to dual boot and accept both operating systems on the same drive, yous have to break it into partitions. Fifty-fifty if y'all dual kicking using two unlike drives, near Linux installations are all-time broken into a few basic partitions for a diversity of reasons. Here are some options to consider.

GPT vs MBR

If you decide to manually partition your boot drive in accelerate, I recommend using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) rather than the older Master Kick Record (MBR). Among the reasons for this change, there are two specific limitations of MBR that GPT doesn't have:

• MBR tin can hold up to 15 partitions, while GPT tin can hold upward to 128.
• MBR only supports up to two terabytes, while GPT uses 64-flake addresses which allows it to back up disks upward to 8 million terabytes.

If you have shopped for difficult drives recently, and then you know that many of today's drives exceed the ii terabyte limit.

The EFI system sectionalisation

If you are doing a fresh installation or using a new drive, in that location are probably no partitions to brainstorm with. In this case, the Os installer will create the first one, which is the EFI Arrangement Sectionalisation (ESP). If yous choose to manually partition your bulldoze using a tool such as gdisk, you volition need to create this partition with several parameters. Based on the existing ESP, I set the size to effectually 500MB and assigned it the ef00 (EFI System) partition type. The UEFI specification requires the format to be FAT32/msdos, nearly likely because it is supportable by a wide range of operating systems.

Operating System Installation

In one case you achieve the start two tasks, you lot can install your operating systems. While I focus on Windows x and Fedora Linux here, the procedure is adequately similar when installing other combinations besides.

Windows 10

I started the Windows 10 installation and created a xx Gigabyte Windows division. Since I had previously installed Linux on my laptop, the drive had an ESP, which I chose to go along. I deleted all existing Linux and swap partitions to starting time fresh, so started my Windows installation. The Windows installer automatically created another small sectionalisation—16 Megabytes—called the Microsoft Reserved Division (MSR). Roughly 400 Gigabytes of unallocated infinite remained on the 512GB kicking drive once this was finished.

I then proceeded with and completed the Windows ten installation process. I then rebooted into Windows to brand sure information technology was working, created my user account, gear up up wi-fi, and completed other tasks that demand to be done on a first-fourth dimension Bone installation.

Fedora Linux

I adjacent moved to install Linux. I started the process, and when it reached the deejay configuration steps, I made sure not to modify the Windows NTFS and MSR partitions. I too did non change the EPS, only I did set its mountain point to/boot/efi. I and so created the usual ext4 formatted partitions,/ (root),/boot, and/dwelling house. The terminal partitioning I created was Linuxbandy.

As with Windows, I continued and completed the Linux installation, and then rebooted. To my please, at boot time the Chiliad Unified Kick Loader (GRUB) menu provided the option to select either Windows or Linux, which meant I did not accept to do whatsoever additional configuration. I selected Linux and completed the usual steps such as creating my user account.

Conclusion

Overall, the process was painless. In past years, there has been some difficulty navigating the changes from UEFI to BIOS, plus the introduction of features such as Secure Boot. I believe that we take now made it by these hurdles and can reliably set multi-boot systems.

I don't miss the Linux LOader (LILO) anymore!

This work is licensed nether a Artistic Commons Attribution-Share Akin 4.0 International License.

Source: https://opensource.com/article/19/5/dual-booting-windows-linux-uefi

Posted by: herreramodyette60.blogspot.com

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