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(this article originally appeared here)

by Michael Fötsch, June 14, 2007, updated for gNewSense deltah

Table of Contents

Introduction

This article explains how to set up a dual-boot system with Windows (or another operating system) and gNewSense GNU/Linux.

Despite all the myths surrounding the difficulty and geekiness of installing GNU/Linux, anyone who manages to install applications on Windows can successfully perform a GNU/Linux installation. Besides, using a Live CD as with gNewSense, installing GNU/Linux is much more fun than installing Windows ever was.

For advanced users and those with special needs, this article contains a separate section explaining manual partitioning.

About gNewSense

gNewSense is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. gNewSense is free as in freedom, and unlike Ubuntu, gNewSense does not contain any non-free firmware, drivers, or applications. So, when you're using gNewSense, you enjoy the essential freedoms of free software without compromises.

gNewSense is based on the most recent version of Ubuntu with Long-Term Support (LTS). This means that its focus is on stability, and security updates will be available until the next LTS version is released.

Before You Begin

The system requirements for installing gNewSense are as follows:

If you have Windows (or another operating system) installed, and you want to set up a dual-boot system, please make a backup of your important files. The gNewSense installer is generally able to resize an existing Windows installation, but in case anything goes wrong, you'll be grateful for a backup.

Also, if you want to resize a Windows installation, you should perform a full disk defragmentation while you're in Windows.

Even if you're planning to remove Windows, there might be a few things you can do in Windows to ease your transition to gNewSense. See Transitioning to GNU/Linux for more info.

Downloading gNewSense

You can download an installation CD from one of the gNewSense mirror sites listed here. The installation CD comes as a single large ISO image file (.iso file), which you can burn to an empty CD using almost any CD burning tool.

Choose the .iso file with the most recent date and version number available – “gnewsense-livecd-delta*-arch-x.y.iso” for the (standard) GNOME version. The .iso file is around 620 MB in size.

If you're using BitTorrent, you can download the ISO image via the corresponding .iso.torrent file instead.

Burning an Installation CD

When the download is complete, use the CD burning tool of your choice to burn the ISO image to a CD. (Double-clicking the .iso file usually opens the correct application.) Just be careful to select the option to burn an ISO image and not to create a data CD. If you end up with a CD that contains a single .iso file instead of a bootable CD, it's time to get another empty CD.

Booting the Live CD

Insert the Live CD and reboot. If your computer detects the CD correctly, you will be presented with the the boot prompt screen.

Press Enter to boot the Live CD.

Note: If the Live CD does not boot, reboot and press F1 at the initial screen to see your options. There might be an option that you can type at the “boot:” prompt to circumvent the problem.

Using the Live CD

The Live CD is a fully functional gNewSense system; it just runs a whole lot slower than the installed system will.

Take a look around. Check whether all your hardware is working (USB devices, wireless network card, etc.). You can use the Live CD to surf the Internet, to connect to Windows machines on your home network, to try out OpenOffice.org or the GIMP, or you can read Richard Stallman's essays or listen to him singing the Free Software song.

Note: You can access your Windows hard disk for reading while you're in the Live CD. You can find it in Places -> Computer.

When you're done and ready to install gNewSense to your hard disk, click the Install icon on the desktop.

Installation Walkthrough

In this section, I will show you screenshots of the entire installation process. As you will see, the installation is a rather simple process. I will provide links to the sections covering the advanced topics as we go.

Step 1: Language

Not much to say, except that gNewSense has built-in support for what seem to be many more languages than Windows. Select your language and click Forward.

Step 2: Country and Timezone

Move the mouse over an area of the map to zoom in, then click a city near you and click Forward.

Step 3: Keyboard Layout

Pretty self-explanatory. Once gNewSense is installed, you can go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard to set advanced options (such as whether you want dead keys with a German keyboard layout, etc.).

Step 4: Hard Disk

In this step, you select the hard disk to install to. Here, you can also decide whether you want a dual-boot setup (keep Windows) or not.

(Depending on the current contents of the hard disk, not all of the options may be available.)

If you want to keep your existing Windows installation, choose the first option. The suggested new partition size should be fine.

If you don't need Windows any longer, go with the second option.

Note to Vista users: It seems Vista has its own built-in partitioning tool that you can use to shrink the Windows partition prior to installing gNewSense. For this, boot into Vista, right-click My Computer, then click Manage -> Disk Management. Right-click the Vista partition and select Shrink Volume. In the gNewSense installer, select “Guided - use the largest continuous free space.” More details here.

Once you click Forward, the changes will be written to disk.

Step 5: User Account

Next, provide your name and login information. It is important to note that the user for which you create an account here does not work with administrator rights (also called “root” privileges) all the time. Rather, the system will ask for the root password when you want to perform a task that requires these rights. The root password is the same as the password that you specify here.

Step 6: Migrate Documents and Settings

The migration assistant helps you migrate user settings and files from an existing Windows or GNU/Linux installation. For example, you can import browser bookmarks or the My Documents folder.

Unfortunately, on my test system, the installer failed to detect the existing operating system, so I was presented with the following screen:

Step 7: Finishing

On the last screen, you are presented with a summary of the settings that you made. Please note that the partitioning changes have already been written to disk. You cannot go back to revert them.

When you click Install, the installation begins.

After a short coffee break, you are asked to reboot.

From now on, whenever you reboot, you will be presented with a boot menu. If you don't select anything after a few seconds, the default operating system will be automatically selected. If you went for a dual-boot setup, you can also choose to boot into the other operating system at this point.

Advanced Partitioning

In this section, I'll explain how to use the manual partitioning tool. I don't know about you, but when I'm given the choice, I always opt for the “advanced”, “manual”, or “expert” installation. I want to know what's going on. The manual partitioning option offers just that – it provides you with a visual representation of your hard disk and lets you resize existing partitions and create new ones to your liking.

I will describe how to install gNewSense side-by-side with an existing Windows (or other operating system) installation.

Start the partitioning tool before running the installer by clicking System -> Administration -> Partition Editor.

At the top of the window, the existing partitions of your hard disk (the one that is selected in the top-right drop-down list) are shown as a horizontal bar. If nothing is shown, you have to select one of the partitions in the list box at the bottom first.

In the screenshot above, there is only one partition, formatted with the “ntfs” filesystem (Windows NT filesystem).

Resizing Windows

First, we need to make room for the gNewSense partitions that we want to create. To do this, click the Windows partition and click Resize/Move. A new dialog appears where you can drag the horizontal bar to the desired size.

The yellow area tells you how much space is currently used. You can't go smaller than that. Please note that the gNewSense partitions are usually invisible to Windows. The hard disk that Windows sees will be exactly as big as the new size that you specify here, so choose a size that's large enough for you to work comfortably in Windows.

Click Resize/Move. At this point, nothing is written to the hard disk yet. All the changes that you make are listed as “pending operations.” The changes will be applied when you click the Apply button.

Creating New Partitions

Back in the main window, there's now a smaller Windows partition and a large gray area, which is the unused space on the hard disk. It's in this unused area that we'll create new partitions for gNewSense. At a minimum, you need two partitions:

This is going to be the root of the filesystem under gNewSense.

This is an area of the hard disk that's used when physical RAM runs out (put simply).

To create a partition, select the “unallocated” partition first. Click the New button. In the dialog that opens, you can make the following settings:

To summarize, you must create at least these partitions:

When you are satisfied, click Apply.

See also the next section for additional tips.

Partitioning Tips

Separate “home” Partition

I recommend to create two “ext3” partitions instead of only one – one for the filesystem root and one for your “home” directories.

The filesystem root (also called “/”) is where installed applications go. With 10 GB, you should be on the safe side. (I'm not using more than 5 GB, and I have installed all the applications I'll ever need.)

The “home” directory (also referred to as “/home”) is similar to “Documents and Settings” in Windows. Every user will have his or her own directory there (“/home/jane,” “/home/john”), where applications store personal settings, or where users store their documents. Use all the remaining space for an “ext3” partition for “/home.”

Having a separate home partition makes it easier to upgrade to a new version of your GNU/Linux distribution or even to switch to a different distribution. The next time you install GNU/Linux, you can erase the root partition and just keep the home partition. You can even set up a dual-boot system with two different GNU/Linux distributions that share the same home partition. (By the way, several GNU/Linux distributions can also share the same swap partition.)

Exchange partition for sharing files between Windows and GNU/Linux

If you want to keep using Windows, you can create an exchange partition through which you can transfer files between Windows and GNU/Linux without the need for an external medium.

For this, just set aside a small partition (say, 1 GB) and format it using the “fat32” filesystem. Unlike “ext3,” FAT32 can be used by Windows, and unlike “ntfs,” GNU/Linux can read and write to FAT32.

Back in Windows, the exchange partition should automatically show up with a new drive letter (D: or E: or whatever).

Assigning Mount Points

Close the Partition Editor and start the installer. In Step 4: Hard Disk, select the option “Manual” and click Forward.

On the next screen, you have to specify which partition to use for which purpose. Select each of the partitions and click Edit partition.

(A mount point is similar to a drive letter in Windows, just much more useful and you can have more than 26 of them.)

In the end, the list of partitions looks something like this:

More Dual-Boot Tweaking

There are (at least) two more things you might want to customize on a dual-boot system – the dual-boot menu and the way Windows partitions are mounted. This section describes both very briefly.

Dual-Boot Menu

This is more correctly referred to as the boot loader menu. It can be customized by editing the file “/boot/grub/menu.lst.” You need administrator privileges to edit this file, so you might want to open it with the following command on the terminal: 

 sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

(When you're asked for a password, provide the one that you specified for the primary user during installation.)

In this file, among other things, you can specify the timeout after which the boot loader boots the default operating system, and you can specify which operating system to use as the default. (You can also give funny names to the entries but I'm sure you would have thought about this yourself.)

Mount Table

The file that controls which partitions to mount where is “/etc/fstab.” Again, you need administrator privileges to edit this file. Here's an example: 

 # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
 #
 # <file system> <mount point>   <type>       <options>                              <dump>  <pass>
 proc            /proc           proc         defaults                               0       0
 /dev/hda7       /               ext3         defaults,errors=remount-ro             0       1
 /dev/hda3       /home           reiserfs     defaults                               0       2
 /dev/hda1       /windows/C      ntfs         defaults,ro,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46  0       2
 /dev/hda5       /windows/D      vfat         defaults,umask=007,gid=46              0       2
 /dev/hda6       none            swap         sw                                     0       0
 /dev/hdb        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660  user,noauto                            0       0
 /dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  auto         rw,user,noauto                         0       0

Although I'm not an expert when it comes to all the filesystem-specific options, editing this file was fairly easy, given a little copying and pasting. If you need help, consult the manual entries for “mount” and “fstab,” which you can access through the online help system (System -> Help, then search for “mount” or “fstab”), or on the terminal: 

 man mount
 man fstab

To see a list of available partitions (mounted or not), type this command: 

 sudo fdisk -l

Please note that when you specify a different mount point, you must first create the respective directory. That is, the directory “/windows/C” must exist before the Windows drive C: can be successfully mounted to it.

You can use the graphical Disks Manager (System -> Administration -> Disks) to mount and unmount partitions, as long as they already appear in /etc/fstab.

Conclusion

As you can see, performing a basic installation of GNU/Linux, especially of one that's as user-friendly as gNewSense, is far from being for experts only. If you have special needs, the gNewSense installer provides all the tools you need.

A dual-boot system is your first step to abandoning Windows entirely. Once you have transferred all your files over to GNU/Linux, you'll see the need to boot up Windows slowly diminish.

You can find more information about setting up a dual-boot system here:

Note: For writing this article, I performed the installation in VirtualBox. Using a virtual machine such as QEMU or VirtualBox is a good way to try your hands at GNU/Linux with absolutely no chance of breaking anything.

Documentation/InstallingGNewSense (last edited 2011-03-18 13:48:30 by zamah)

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