The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Media Direct Boot Question

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by unitydisconnect, Dec 22, 2008.

  1. unitydisconnect

    unitydisconnect Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    22
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hey guys

    Its been a long time since ive been on this forum, but this fantastic community helped me choose a laptop (XPS M1330), so hopefully you guys can help me with this question that's been buggin me for a while.


    I really want to use the media direct button to boot into linux (preferably ubuntu). It would be pretty badass if this is possible. I feel like i read this somewhere, but it's been soo long and I can't seem to find the thread.

    Please dont tell me just to search, I really have looked around on the forum and used the search function. Most the threads are about how to triple boot with media direct, windows and linux, but that's not what I want to do. I'm currently dual booting Ubuntu 8.04 and Vista Home Premium, btw.


    Thanks a bunch guys :)
     
    unitydisconnect, Dec 22, 2008
    #1
  2. Hep!

    Hep! sees beauty in everything

    Reputations:
    1,806
    Messages:
    5,921
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    206
    The MD button just points to partition 0 on the hard drive.
    Download GParted: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
    Use it to partition the drive to be ext3 and NTFS, set the sizes to be whatever sizes you want each OS to have. ext3 for linux, NTFS for Windows. If you set up partitions for swap then you'll want to leave some unpartitioned, unformatted space. Additionally (though I would not do this) if you are setting up a 50mb boot partition then make sure that is partition 0
    Then just install *nix to the ext3 partition, and Windows to the NTFS partition (I'd do it in that order as well). No need to configure bootloaders, since your power buttons will be the OS selection.
    Feel free to ask any questions.


    Also, ska is f***ing great. Hep hep hep! :)
     
    Hep!, Dec 22, 2008
    #2
  3. unitydisconnect

    unitydisconnect Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    22
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    hey thanks for the epic-ly quick response. I'll definitely try out what you suggested and let ya know how it goes.

    As for ska... agreed! I'm seeing Reel Big Fish and Streetlight Manifesto on the 1st of January, and the Slackers on the 2nd! It should be a blast.

    Thanks again
     
    unitydisconnect, Dec 22, 2008
    #3
  4. Charles P. Jefferies

    Charles P. Jefferies Lead Moderator Super Moderator

    Reputations:
    22,339
    Messages:
    36,639
    Likes Received:
    5,082
    Trophy Points:
    931
    Please do not post links to sites that promote installing Apple OS X on anything but Macs. Since Apple's EULA prohibits installing OS X on non-Apple hardware, we also ban it here. Thank you.
     
    Charles P. Jefferies, Dec 22, 2008
    #4
  5. Hep!

    Hep! sees beauty in everything

    Reputations:
    1,806
    Messages:
    5,921
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    206
    Hep!, Dec 22, 2008
    #5