Install linux (slackware) on dell laptop.

skiabox · 11-11-2012, 05:23 PM

I have a dell laptop that came with windows 7 pre-installed.
It has 3 partitions.
One ΟΕΜ partition 39mb, one ntfs partition 218.20gb (boot, pagefile, primary), and one recovery ntfs partition 14.65gb (system, active, primary).
Is it possible to make it dual boot windows 7 and linux?(slackware v14.0)

snowpine · 11-11-2012, 05:27 PM

Yes but I highly recommend you read the documentation and make a backup of your data before proceeding. Dual booting with Lilo is a very common and well-documented task.

skiabox · 11-11-2012, 05:29 PM

Thanks for answering, but I really need a partitioning guide (I have found an installation guide on youtube but it starts right after partitioning).

snowpine · 11-11-2012, 05:30 PM

Do you think that youtube.com is the trusted source for Slackware documentation, or maybe there is another site?

skiabox · 11-12-2012, 07:04 AM

Is there a step-by-step guide about partitioning for dual boot?

snowpine · 11-12-2012, 09:25 AM

I found this page for Slackware documentation:

http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:install

It recommends to partition using fdisk or cfdisk and then configure lilo boot loader for the dual boot. Have you used these tools before; are you clear on these concepts? If not, do you know how to use man pages? Do you have a specific question/error message that troubles you (or just sort of generally lost)?

chexmix · 11-14-2012, 01:07 PM

I would recommend you do as much reading as possible on this, but also -- if you're familiar with downloading ISOs and burning them to disc -- get yourself a copy of this:

http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage

It can not only help you partition your drive (in a pretty easy-to-do visual way) but it can save your system if you muck things up (as I definitely have from time to time).

/Glenn

frankbell · 11-14-2012, 09:36 PM

Several years ago, I did a series of posts on installing Slackware at a blog I was volunteering at.

This link points to the last post; it links to the others. Number two in the series illustrates partitioning.

The pictures aren't the best, but I hope it will help.

I prefer cfdisk; I find it much friendlier than fdisk.