Dual booting involves having two or more operating systems installed on your computer. For instance, one can have two 64-bit OS version like Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS running on the same computer if the hardware supports this to be done.
Both the operating systems are installed in a way that one acts as a host and the other is a guest operating system but both of them equally share the hardware requirements. Apple users know what I am talking about, for the rest here is an explanation:
- Make sure you backup your data before you get started with installing operating system. One of the users tried installing Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) but ended up with one OS on his hard drive. Thankfully, having a Seagate portable hard drive with his data saved the day.
- The process explained here is not the only method that exists out there. I am sure more complex methods are available. Google is by far the best consumer support system to assist you with such procedures. The method given here has just a hard drive and two operating system installations involved. Some latest laptops already have partitioned hard drive to allow recovery that could come in the way of partition you would want to have for installations.
- Do this procedure on your own risk. Hopefully, no data loss or hardware damage will occur still care needs to be taken.
- None the less, it’s a learning procedure.
Steps To Dual Boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu Linux
Step 1: When Windows 8 installation is successfully completed, boot into Windows 8 and look for the Computer icon on desktop screen. Right-click it and go to “Manage”. This will launch the Computer Management utility.
Step 2: Under Storage option listed in the left corner, Disc Management option will be visible in the collapsible menu. Clicking it will display your hard drive and any existing optical disc information.
Step 3: You can see here the partitions that are made before Ubuntu from a DVD is installed. The entire hard drive has two partitions.
Step 4: You will see a large partition named C, right click it to open the dialog box. Hit “Shrink Volume”. This translates into making Windows create some space for your new Operating System that you wish to install. You can instead use software like Gparted for the purpose, however, it is better to let Windows itself handle the partitioning.
Step 5: Windows will notify you the amount of space that can be made available without interfering with the system. Usually 30GB space is given for Ubuntu but your OS requirements can differ.
Step 6: You will next see the space made by Windows for the Operating System.
Your system is now ready for another OS installation such as Ubuntu in this example. Assuming you already know how to go to BIOS utility to make your laptop boot from optical drive rather than the hard drive. You may also use a Live USB instead to install Ubuntu but then again, your laptop must boot from USB.
Note: There are a number of tutorials available on how to install Ubuntu but majority of them are for virtual machine installations that does not give detailed information about your disc partition.
In this case, Ubuntu disc did not give any option that asked whether to install Ubuntu with Windows existing as another Operating System since it did not detect the existence of Windows 8. The partitions had to be created manually with help of free space made by windows earlier.
The photograph shows various partitions created with sda1 and sda2 being the ones where Windows 8 got installed. You can choose which Operating System to boot from and make one Operating System the default option for booting.
That is all there is to it. Hope it helps to explore Operating Systems you can have on your machines.
