Dual boot Ubuntu and Vista with Media Direct

I just got a XPS 1530 with Vista. I want to install Ubuntu on it, but I want to keep the Media Direct partition. What is the best way to do this?

 

Shrink your windows partition, don't delete your Media Direct partition though.

 

Yes, I personally would have problem though as 4 partitions are max, I use a /, /home and /swap...in addition to Vista. Will logical partitions work for a /home say, for reinstalling linux and keeping settings, etc? Never thought about it much.

 

Why not use extended partitions, zoid? You can install linux on an extended partition, not sure about anything before Windows Vista.....

 

Thomas....

Last I tried Ubuntu as a dual boot...no sound so I couln't stay with it. There was no support for Dell 1505n.

Is this better now? Will I have any probs finding drivers for the 1330?

 

You shouldn't, but wait, isn't the 1505n one of Dell's Ubuntu powered machines?

 

I meant the Dell wifi card...

 

You have to use the bcm43xx driver, or ndiswrapper.
Other then that, all you'll need is the nVidia Driver.

 

nintendofreak94: If you aren't familiar with Ubuntu, the best way to install it on a Vista machine is with Wubi. Instead of downloading the CD at the Ubuntu website, download Wubi which downloads and installs ubuntu without creating a new partition. However, this isn't a permanent solution in my opinion because this installation method seemed to slow down Vista a bit and kept the system clock at an hour ahead no matter what I did. Also, you cannot access the files on the Vista partition with this type of installation which is annoying if all of your media files are on your Vista partition

To install it on a new partition with Vista, go to the "format and partition hard disks" option under Administration in the control panel. Find the partition with Vista on it which is called "OS" under the origonal m1330 installation. Right click that partition and go to shrink volume. This will allow you to shrink the partition so you have empty space to install Ubuntu with the live cd. Try to get at least 7 GB for installation where 30 GB would be ideal for having as much program space as you want. For some reason, I could only shrink the partition to get 7.9 GB for Ubuntu on a 200 GB hard drive when it had 70 GB free space. If you temporarily turn off shadow copies in Vista, you can get more space for Ubuntu here.

Now boot the system using the live cd you download from the Ubuntu website. Follow the directions. Be careful around the choosing the partition step. Do this manually. Here, choose 256-1000 mb swap partition. If you have 2 GB+ ram, go with 256 mb. If you have less, go with more swap area. Then, make an ext3 partition with / as the root directory. Then, you're good to go for the rest of the installation. Linux has a bit of a learning curve, but Ubuntu makes this process a lot easier than with other Linux distros.

LES: I just got that card up and running on the m1330 on Ubuntu 8.04 by installing the driver with NdisWrapper. The wifi card wouldn't work right after with WEP with the pre-installed wifi, so I installed Wcip with synaptics installer to do all the wifi stuff for the system instead of network manager, etc. After a restart, no problems with wifi. The new Ubuntu 64-bit version is very snappy on a dell m1330.

 

Yuo can acces your Vista partition, I just forgot how, try this:

Code:

host://

 

shrink your windows partition
then install ubuntu with the alternate CD (without GRUB)
then install EasyBCD on vista and add Ubuntu to the vista bootloader

 

The installer cd even helps you in resizing your vista partition during the installation.

 

Maybe this has changed in Hardy, but don't try to resize your Vista partition outside of Vista. Vista is on a "dynamic" partition and makes all of its associated partitions dynamic. I'm not sure what this means technically, but I know what it meant for me in the past: resize Vista partition with Linux and all kinds of errors started happening with partitions being corrupted. End of story was a clean hard drive install.

I never had a problem with doing this with purely XP/linux systems, though.

 

A few clarifications on this which may help other noobs

To shrink Vista partition, I think a more accurate description of where you do this is: Control Panel>Administration>Computer Management>Storage>Disk Management> then RIGHT CLICK on OS C:, select shrink volume.

Like the others here, it would not give me more than about 10% of the available "free" space. I found shutting off system restore (shadow copy) added another 50% or so. Make sure you read about the pros-cons of shutting this off.

Separately: During Ubuntu setup - I think the following description may more accurately describe the process of creating the needed new partitions:
You are creating TWO new partitions, one for Swap and another for Ubuntu (ext3 partition). Create the 256mb SWAP volume (or whatever size you desire) FIRST in the free space (Swap is a volume type in the dropdown), then proceed to use the rest of the free space for the ext3 volume where Linux will reside.