Dual Booting Configuration

[AnilSam]

I would like to install Ubuntu Linux in my laptop. How can I do it without disturbing the recovery partition and without loosing my primary partition and all the licensed software products. Thanks

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

You said the words...dual boot. Shrink the main partition in Windows and create a new blank space of at least 30 gigs or so. Run the Ubuntu installer and let it create partitions within that blank space. When I install Linux I create 3 partitions: root ("/") of maybe 10 gigs home ("/home") of 15-20 gigs and Linux swap of about 2 or 4 gigs. Linux will install its own bootloader called grub which will control dual booting. You will get a DOS looking screen on bootup that lets you choose to boot into Linux or Windows. By editing the grub settings you can make Windows the default so it boots to Windows if a certain time passes (which you can also set).  By doing this Windows and all other functions of the laptop will be unaffected. Right now my Linux installation on my personal laptop is on a virtualbox virtual machine rather than its own partition, which meets my needs to occasionally perform some task in Linux and is a much more flexible arrangement. 

[WAWood]

@AnilSam

I usually refer folks to the Ubuntu Forums for installation help -- as there are complications with the newer UEFI PCs that involve a lot more than just creating an empty partition.

Read through this for more information:  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

[Huffer]

Yes you have to install in UEFI mode since Windows 10 will already have been installed in that mode but that is not a problem if you use a current distro of Ubuntu...they have used a "signed" image since 16.04 (current is 18.10) which works fine and causes no problems and will install on a system with UEFI and secure boot. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/11/19/beginners-guide-how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-1...

Some third party drivers like nVidia work better (or require) with secure boot disabled, but not necessary to do so just to install Linux. 

[AnilSam]

Thanks for the soln.

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@Huffer wrote:

You said the words...dual boot. Shrink the main partition in Windows and create a new blank space of at least 30 gigs or so. Run the Ubuntu installer and let it create partitions within that blank space. When I install Linux I create 3 partitions: root ("/") of maybe 10 gigs home ("/home") of 15-20 gigs and Linux swap of about 2 or 4 gigs. Linux will install its own bootloader called grub which will control dual booting. You will get a DOS looking screen on bootup that lets you choose to boot into Linux or Windows. By editing the grub settings you can make Windows the default so it boots to Windows if a certain time passes (which you can also set).  By doing this Windows and all other functions of the laptop will be unaffected. Right now my Linux installation on my personal laptop is on a virtualbox virtual machine rather than its own partition, which meets my needs to occasionally perform some task in Linux and is a much more flexible arrangement. 

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[Huffer]

It had been a while since I did a Linux install so I got out an 8th gen i3 laptop (not an HP, a Lenovo we had at my office) and I installed Kubuntu (my favored distro) 18.10 64 bit onto it as dual boot with Windows 10. It would not install from the built in DVD drive so using Rufus I turned the .iso into a bootable thumb drive and proceeded to install booting from that. I pretty much used the steps outlined above as far as partitioning the drive for Linux. I tried it with secure boot enabled and ran into some difficulties so I turned secure boot off and did the install with legacy boot enabled. It installed fine. I then re-enabled secure boot and it continued to work fine.