[mdlug-newbie] Install Help

[Robert Citek]

Hello Ron,

On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Ron Green <argie4444 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I’d like to setup a dual boot configuration.

Easy enough to do.  In fact, I have most of my machines configured to
mutli-boot.  But despite that, I am curious to know why you want to
dual boot?  Creating a dual- or multi-boot is convenient, but there
are some serious risks which should not be taken lightly.  For
example, you run the risk of inadvertently wiping whatever is
installed on your harddrive or altering the drive configuration in
such a way that prevents Windows from booting.  While these risks are
slight, they are very real and possible.

And for the casual user there are some excellent, safer alternatives,
such as installing using wubi or installing in a virtual machine or
installing on an external drive.  Unless you are very experienced with
linux and have exotic needs for a multi-boot system, I'd strongly
recommend one of these other installation methods.

> When I load the UBUNTU live CD, and try to install, the screen says there is no operating system on this computer, and only shows the 300GB drive.  Then it asks about un-mounting the disk.  I don’t exactly know what this means.  Thanks!

Since you are not familiar with mounting/unmounting, then you may not
want to dual boot and instead should go with another method.  If your
machine has enough horsepower, I'd highly recommend using
VirtualBox[1] and installing Ubuntu or any other linux distro that
way.  Baring that, I would explore wubi[2].  If wubi won't work for
you, then I would explore installing to an external drive, an entire
drive dedicated to Ubuntu.  In each of those cases you avoid the whole
issue of adjusting your existing Windows installation, yet you'll have
a full-featured Ubuntu linux system just like you would had you
created a dual-boot.

If you still want to proceed with creating a dual-boot system, then
prepare yourself first by becoming extremely familiar with how to do a
full backup and recovery of your Windows system.

Regardless of which way you go, be sure to let us know how things work out.

[1] http://www.virtualbox.org/
[2] http://wubi-installer.org/

Regards,
- Robert