Windows 7, Vista and Kubuntu all on one pc

4743hudsonj

Ok right, i know how to partition drives but i cant remember some of the minor details about it

basically getting a new laptop very soon and it will ship with vista, but i should also be receiving my shiny new copy of kubuntu soon. AND also im looking at tomorrows release of win 7 candidate 1.

Basically if i partition the drive into 3 when i get it then install the other two os's will all 3 work together or will i have issues? also will i be able to access the same file on all 3 os's no matter where i place it and finally, im obviously not going to keep all 3 as this is just a waste of memory so im going to make a choice on what to keep (i dont now how long the win 7 license will be) so when i decide to remove on, will it be easy, can i simply merge the partitions without data loss or issues?

regards

fwor

Firstly, if the laptop ships with Vista already installed on one large partition, you will need to shrink that and then create three new ones.

Apparently it's possible to do this with the Disk Management tools in Vista but it doesn't seem to be very reliable, so I'd use a GPARTED LiveCD instead, which makes it easy - you just need to remember to unmount the volume before resizing.

If you then install Win7 to the second partition, the Windows bootloader should automatically be configured Ok. Then do the Kubuntu install, which should install GRUB with the 2 Windows installs auto detected and all 3 OS shown.

The third new partition is required for swap space, which is mandatory for Kubuntu. If you install more than one linux distro, they can all share the same swap partition.

Removing one or two of the OS should be fairly easy, as long as you don't mind sticking with GRUB as your bootloader.

4743hudsonj

hm im nit sure ive had more experience with the vista manager and ive never had issues with creating partitions but you lost me at GRUB?, ive only ever used ubuntu preinstalled on an old pc, wasnt so tech savvy then.

and do you know about all 3 being able to read the same file?

fwor

I didn't say that you would have issues creating partitions with the Vista Disk Management tool.

GRUB is the bootloader that Ubuntu uses by default. IIRC you could choose LILO instead, but IMO it's harder to use. GRUB replaces the Windows bootloader, but recognises the presence of an OS other than Linux. It doesn't work the other way round, because MS apparently cannot conceive of a situation where a user might want to use anything other than a MS OS on their PC.

If you want one OS to access files on another OS's partition, a default Ubuntu install will be able to read files on the NTFS partitions OK. I don't know about Win7, but I'm fairly sure Vista won't read the default Ubuntu Ext3 partition without further work.

fwor

badguts wrote: »

to get back to the windows bootloader you can just make a new fixmbr and fixboot from recovery,

Yes, but if the OP wanted to (say) get rid of Win7 and keep Vista and Kubuntu, fixmbr/fixboot would blow away Kubuntu...

[Deleted User]

Use EasyBCD to manage the bootloader, it's a very easy application to use and significantly reduces the risk of not being able to boot up into one O/S.

If you're just wanting to experiment with different operating systems and you don't want the risks of multibooting, you could try running them in a Virtual Machine from within Vista. There's a lot of work that you need to do to prepare the machine and there's caution to be taking removing them if at the end of it you decide you don't like them, whereas with a VM that is not applicable..

cooki2222

use Virtual Pc, you can install as many os's as u like with it but it wont affect ur main os, basically it opens up a window in the program and acts like a totally different computer, used it to install windows 7 beta and worked a charm

4743hudsonj

that slipped my mind completly, very labour intensive for the computer, how well will it work on an intel dual core 2.2ghz processor 4bg ram and 256 dedicated memory?

[Deleted User]

4743hudsonj wrote: »

that slipped my mind completly, very labour intensive for the computer, how well will it work on an intel dual core 2.2ghz processor 4bg ram and 256 dedicated memory?

It all depends what you want to do with the VM. Gaming is probably not going to be great, but for actual evaluating and testing purposes running in a VM is the best option, unless you have a dedicated workstation you can allocate to use.

cooki2222

the thing with virtual pc is u can dedicate as much or little ram as u like to the systems, very handy piece of software if u just wanna test the other two out. Must download release 1 of windows 7 and install again the beta was very patchy

4743hudsonj

well ive decided to stick with using kubuntu from a live boot cd, and running a vm for rc1 windws 7 for general use if i like it.