G50VT-X5(BestBuy) Dual Boot Win7Pro/Ubuntu 9.10 help

Hi everyone, first post here but have found great info about my laptop on this site since I got it a few months back. I was wondering if anyone could link me to posts, threads and/or sites that would help me through the process of dual booting 64-bit versions of Windows 7 Professional and Ubuntu 9.10 on to my laptop. I've searched through various posts and threads already, but I'm afraid that some of them may be outdated or that better methods have come about since they were posted.

I also have a few questions that I wasn't able to completely clarify:

1. Will LCDHype work with Win7 Pro and/or Ubuntu 9.10? I ask since I read that the OLED display drivers are pretty much less useful than that program is.

2. Where can I find INF Chipset drivers for Win7? I looked on support.asus.com for the drivers using my laptop model but putting windows 7 64-bit to find compatible drivers and was unable to find any for that driver.

3. I read a dual booting guide on life hacker and they recommended creating 3 partitions on your hard drive, 1 for each OS and 1 for the rest of your media, documents, programs, etc. Is this recommended for this laptop?

Much thanks in advance for all the help.

 

If you're looking for a safe and proven method of installing Linux next yo your Windows installation, there is [to my knowledge] no better and easier method than using EasyBCD.

In WinXP times I used to set dual booting on place differently. That involved extracting ubuntu.bin and placing it in Win's partition root and adding a corresponding entry in a configuration file. Now, it is as simple as installing one OS after another (preferably Windows first) and remembering to put GRUB (or other Linux boot manager) on a partition where Linux distro is being installed as opposed to the MBR (to be found under "advanced" options during Linux installation).

That's it. It couldn't be any simpler that that (other that Linux and Windows worlds communicating and inter-operating with one another which is sadly not to be expected Windows-front).

PS You'll need 4 partitions to be exact. One for Linux-SWAP. I have them in this order: Win7Pro 64-bit (32GB), Data ("the rest"), Ubuntu 64-bit (8/16GB - the latter if you want to be able to make upgrades as opposed to clean installations), Linux-SWAP (2BG=equals my RAM capacity).

PS 2 Why asking for INF driver for Win7? I'm pretty much sure one is to be found on ASUS support download site, but why would you need to install one separately? Before I upgraded from WinXP to Win7 I also collected the whole bunch of drivers of which I barely needed to use any - I chose to use some, but w/o a real need to TBH).

PS 3 You don't actually believe this LCDHype being a Wingows app will work on your Linux? If you're feeling adventurous you might want to try using Wine for this purpose though.

 

Also - as I just noticed that: " Join Date: Jan 2010 Posts: 1" - welcome to the NBR!
You chose a damn sexy-looking joining date - 1.1.2010

 

Windows 7 should be bale to install that automatically, but the Chipset is the Intel PM45, so you can get the updated INF/driver directly from Intel at:
http://tinyurl.com/y8lxv6n

Just pick your OS from the list and you can go through the download process from there.

 

Thanks for the quick response guys.

AdiQue: Is EasyBCD compatible with both Win7 and Ubuntu 9.10? I read an article on Life Hacker (yeah I like that blog ) about EasyBCD before, but had completely forgotten about it until you mentioned it. Looks like I'd have to use a beta version for it to be compatible, at least with Win7, so is this still recommended? I assume it'd work by installing Win7 first and then following instructions from here. Does it matter that they're referring to older versions of both OSes?

Also, how do you recommend I partition my hard drive space? Are the sizes you suggested enough for each OS, and does the SWAP space have to be the size of your RAM?

I'm looking for the INF chipset because guides from this very site suggested installing those first when switching over to Win7 like here and here.

About LCDHype, I didn't think when I thought it would work on Linux, so when I'm on Ubuntu, what can I use to make my OLED display show some useful information? I honestly don't know what Wine is, I thought that was another distro of Linux, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Eleison: I was following the guides I mentioned before, but if Win7 will find all of my drivers for me, should I bother and just let Win7 do all the work for me? That'd be great!

Again, much thanks for all the answers!

 

In my own experience, an average user is perfectly fine letting Windows 7 find all of their drivers, but any power user (including gamers), should manually update their drivers, because Windows 7 doesn't always find the latest or best drivers for the hardware, and you want everything running at 100% if you're gaming .

 

Oh yes I will definitely be gaming on this rig, I was thinking of using the Win7 partition purely for gaming and experimenting with Ubuntu as if it were my main OS, just to see how it is. Should I update drivers from manufacturers sites, or will asus' support site suffice for finding all the latest updates?

 

Bump with the following questions that I still have:

Also, should I update drivers from manufacturers sites, or will asus' support site suffice for finding all the latest updates?

Much thanks in advance for the help!

 

You should be safe for about 6 months to 1 year updating from ASUS's site, but the system will eventually become an "archive" system, at which point you will need to track down things like video drivers elsewhere.

I can't really provide much info on your Ubuntu questions, as I'm more of a Windows guy, myself.