Dual boot Windows Vista / Ubuntu on HP Notebook
 

I want to dual boot my new HP Notebook for Ubuntu and Windows Vista. Anybody any warnings about this or any experience of it ?

I heard a rumour that your CPU can make a difference to successful dual booting - but I haven't faintest idea why - anybody heard of this ?

jack

You can boot as many systems as you wish. The CPU got nothing to do with booting. The distros you select may be target to 32 or 64 bits and Intel or AMD platforms though. Ubuntu make one for 32 bits but its 64 bits distro is labeled for AMD.

Before doing anything like this (installing new OS/ updating OS/ Major config change/ new kernel/ change in x.org) backup anything that is important.

before installing you need to resize your vista partition to fit ubuntu in next to it, This is probably best done in Vista.

This is a common task and there loads of of tutorials on the web and a google search comes up with enough.

If you have less than 4GiB of RAM I'd use the 32bit version of ubuntu as there is better support for binary drivers (e.g. graphics) and CSS apps (e.g. flash).

If you have more than 4GiB of RAM and a 64bit processor use the 64bit version but you may have to use ndis wrappers to get some stuff to work.

If you have a 32bit processor use the 32bit version

I'm assuming you already have vista installed on your 'new' notebook. Depending upon how new it is and how much you have used it, you may want to defragment before re-sizing vista. I would suggest you then use Ubuntu installation CD to create a partition for Ubuntu and format it.

I believe archShade explained the rumor about processors you referred to.

Step 1 - Use the HP utility to create your windows recovery Disks..

Step 2 - experiment away!!