I rarely use Windows in the last 10 years, but I needed a new laptop and the options were limited. I found one i liked, decent specs
Win Home 10 64 bit (would prefer Pro w/ rem desktop)
2yr COMPLETE warranty w/ purchase on credit card
& Lots more all for under $800 shipped) - so I thought that seemed good, especially after spec'ing out a Dell, Lenovo or HP and seeing the price. Normal price for the unit was $1300 + shipping, it was a shell shocker deal. I'm wondering if it is truly BRAND new though - it looks like it is.
So I found that each hard drive has like 3 or 4 partitions. The SSD has the OS, a 300MB EFI (or UEFI sector) and another 5-10GB sector at the end. The 1TB HD has a 2+GB sector at the beginning and a 40+GB sector at the end which I think is labeled "recovery disk" or something.

I'd like to install something like Kubuntu (open to other suggestions, Arch maybe, I'm used to Kubuntu & ubuntu on servers). Problem is no optical drive (I hate that trend). I guess walmart one I have to make a bootable USB and put some ISO's on it, but I've seen about 10-20 programs that do this and it seems that some systems are picky with them, maybe only reading the first ISO when they should be selectable.

I like Windows for some things, native apps, so I run VM workstation or player and run a Windows OS. I DON'T game (so IDK if this system is the wrong choice for a non-gamer, I didnt see non-gaming machines for less $ with same specs though, odd). Can I install Win 10 into a VM that is installed on Linux? Should I image my laptop's Win 10 partition/system and then transfer than to a VM? I think there is a converter that will convert any computer into a virtual machine, which might be an option, IDK if it works with Windows 10. It came with NO discs or software, so I have to be careful.

Can anyone give me any suggestions? If I could go back to Win 7/8 days I'd have to problems doing this, but w/o optical as well as lack of ISO's to install Win 10 (F U MS!!) I'm just lost as what to do with this setup to get it going. So frustrated and I want to get it running before the 30 day window closes for returns.

I'd like ot know if anyone has used Linux on one of these systems and if they had any problems

If you mess around with installing linux and can't restore it to the original condition you probably could have trouble returning it and maybe even warranty service. I think you should make some sort of a linux live usb with persistent changes and see how well you can configure linux and make it work on that laptop before trying to install to the hard drive to see if you even want to mess with it. You probably want to keep windows intact (which would be good for return/warranty purposes). If what your saying about the existing partition scheme is that windows is using a large partition on the 1TB drive just as additional storage, you should split that partition using gparted,.Let windows use part of it the way it originally was, and format the other half with a linux filesystem(etx4, xfs btrfs or something). Install linux with that linux filesystem partition as the / target, don't create additional partitions with the installer, and figure out some dual boot. As simple a hack as creating an additional folder in the existing windows EFI partition and putting ELILO into it and then using the laptops bios menu to pick the elilo when you want linux might work with minimal changes to the OEM configuration that can be undone for warranty /return purposes. Of course you can back up the OEM configuration to image files if you have the external storage for it, and this might be preferable.

You should be able to install kubuntu on there no problem and set it to dual boot with minimal headache. Rufus is a nice prog to make a bootable USB Windows. I've used several, most of them worked but I can't remember which ones didn't.http://rufus.ie.

One of the cool tricks I learned using Slackware is that you can use LiLo to set the MBR for your linux install on a USB "key". If you use this method, you wont have to touch anything but the data sector on the SSD, ensuring you'll be able to use autorecover.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LILO_(boot_loader)


On my current gaming PC I just switched to Intel CPU AMD GPU from just the opposite. When I was using the Nvidia card's I found the drivers to be quite excellent. The GUI is very similar to the windows counterpart. Stable and easy to install. I used mint most of the time, but I have used the nvidia drivers on ubuntu, mint, and Slackware. The Slackware installation is a bit trickier but not very difficult to figure out.

jrjong,

To protect yourself in case of a future warranty claim, I would install Macrium Reflect Free, create bootable rescue media and make a system image of your current drive to an external hard drive.

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

You can create your own W10 installation media:
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/creating...ple-heres-how/

1 members found this post helpful.

Rufus would get my vote if you're doing this on Windows. Etcher is good too...just have to download the ISO, and it should be easy to make a bootable USB.
If you want to dual-boot, there are lots of tutorials, depending on what distro you pick, but that's beside the point right now. To get started, I'd burn a live distro to USB first, and run it. Granted, it won't give you persistence, but it WILL let you test out all your hardware. Doesn't seem to be too exotic, although I have heard of some issues with the M2 drives. Personally, I like openSUSE Tumbleweed, but that's your call.

Once you test the hardware with the live USB, you can dual-boot pretty easily. If you want to blow Windows away (sounds like you want to keep it for SOME things), you're good. Most computers come with a Windows activation key, typically on a sticker but may be in your documentation. Produkey is a good piece of software that can extract that key from a running Windows system. You can then download the Windows 10 ISO image from Microsoft, and install it easily and use the key to activate it. That goes for installing Windows onto a virtual machine as well...won't matter, it'll just look for/ask for the activation key.

His new laptop will have been configured with GPT/UEFI booting. Does LILO support that? With Grub-EFI, nothing gets installed to MBR.

If installing to MBR of USB, then he'll have to keep CSM enabled in BIOS, which likely isn't as shipped with Win10 preinstalled, and he'll have to choose what to boot using the UEFI BIOS boot menu.

tl;dr:
For installing Linux, only buy hardware that has been on the market longer than 1 year.
If you're going for Debian Stable, make that 2 years.

jrjong,

For recent hardware you need a recent kernel.

Try looking at something like an Arch-based distro such as EneavourOS:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...it-4175679447/

Current kernel is 5.7.12.