Hello everyone

First off I'm a complete noob so sorry if I sound stupid or fail to make sense at any point

I'm brand new to Linux. I'm using Ubuntu through W7 right now. My hard drive is failing. I have a Toshiba Satellite L645D-S4056. I have a brand new hard drive being shipped to my house.

My question is when I install my hard drive what steps should I take to install both Ubuntu and Opensuse on it. I know I need to partition it.

If anyone could please help me out it would be much appreciated.

(If the answer has already been posted or I posted this in the wrong section I'm sorry)


-Jared

Hi If you have the ubuntu cd if you load it to run from cd (try without installing) you can use gparted which is on the live cd, With the new drive fitted internal /external, then you can format the new drive. You can also setup the partitions that you want. When that is done I would load Opensuse 1st then Ubuntu to there respective partitions.
Hope this helps

Are you going to keep Windows? If so, you need to put that on the drive first. You can install Linux after Windows safely, but not the other way around. Does "using Ubuntu through Windows" mean wubi? I don't know if there's an equivalent for SUSE, though you could run a Windows equivalent of Virtualbox. If you install Ubuntu, then you could use SUSE in Virtualbox (or as a live CD) if you just want to see how it compares to Ubuntu. For partitions you'd want
1: Windows
2: Ubuntu /
3: Ubuntu /home
4: swap

If you wanted to install everything, you'd need quite a few partitions. It is not a good idea to try to get Ubuntu and SUSE to share the same /home. It might work, but you might run into problems if two versions of the same program have different ideas on how their configuration files should be laid out! That means a minimum of Windows, Ubuntu, SUSE, swap. If you want a separate /home for either of the Linuxes, then you would need to use an extended partition, so you could have
1: Windows
2: Ubuntu, containing (5) root and (6) home
3: SUSE, containing (7) root and (8) home
4: swap

Thank you both for replying. I REALLY appreciate it.

I was actually planing on just using Ubuntu and Opensuse. No Windows, is that possible?

I have the two OSs burned on discs.

With that being said how should I partition those? I've never partitioned * before so will there be a program that pops up to do it?

Thanks again

If you want just Ubuntu and Opensuse then suggest you run the live ubuntu CD in live mode, i.e. do not install. Then click the install button and it will automatically partition the disk for you - from memory. However, if it wants to put everything on one partition, except swap, then I would definitely go for a separate /home partition - that way you can reinstall the operating system without destroying your own personal stuff, as may well be necessary at some point if you are new.

Then you'll at least have Ubuntu on the thing.

Subsequently Opensuse can be put on too.

Not expert but that seems easiest to me.

1 members found this post helpful.

I'm definitely new haha.

So to recap.

Boot from CD. Run Ubuntu in live mode. Partition Ubuntu/Root/Home. Then put in the Suse CD run in live mode, partition Suse/Root/Home and have a swap?

I don't know what swap is haha.

Am I thinking on the right path?

No, that's not it:

Put Ubuntu CD in and reboot. Assuming it is a live CD which will give a sort of 'just try it' option where the thing runs from the CD-rom drive without installing on the hard drive. Once it is up and running click the install button, it is always trying to get you to click this - it wants you to install it.

It then asks simple questions and offers to partition the hard drive for you automatically. Perhaps just let it do that, but, to me, you need a /home partition - this is the partition where the ordinary user, not root, puts their stuff. It is nothing to do with /Root/home. If it does not give you a /home partition automatically you might consider the option to allow it to create one.

The point is this is a simple way of getting Ubuntu in. To put in Opensuse, which I have never used and don't know anything about, you'll have to suck it and see. But since you now have Ubuntu in you are in a better position to install it further up the hard disk. Partitioning always makes one tense but it is not really that big a thing.

You could install Ubuntu and then post say 'fdisk -l' to here and people would tell you how to put in Opensuse. Put it in the Opensuse forum here.

Just go for it. Blank hard drive nothing to worry about.

Swap is what Linux uses when (1) it runs out of memory or (2) you ask it to hibernate. I suggested a swap partition because you have a laptop, but if you don't want to hibernate and have at least 1GB of RAM, you can do without it.

If you don't have a swap, you can have 4 partitions: / and /home for each distro. If you do, you need to use extended partitions as I mentioned.

Both Ubuntu and SUSE have easy installers which allow you to do the partitioning. But do look on the website and read the instructions first!

I will suggest you to partition the disk in 2 halfs, one for ubuntu and one for opensuse.

Now big question for you is to how to partition, well there are many ways to do that, u can use

1. ubuntu dvd,
2. open suse dvd,
3. windows 7 dvd even windows xp cd.

No matter from which dvd u boot ur system ( ubuntu, opensuse, or windows 7/vista/xp ) they will all take you to the first fundamental step of disk partitioning because every operation system resides in there own comfort zone of there file system.

But when u run installation from windows 7/vista/xp cd/dvd just go up to the part where partitioning of the disk happens, do not format disk in ntfs format (used by all windows oses ) or complete the installation as you have to keep disk raw unallocated for ubuntu or opensuse to use.

divide your disk in to 2 equal unallocated raw partitions and install ubuntu and opensuse on each partition, both setup of ubuntu and opensuse will give u an option to install them in unallocated raw space, just select that option and let the automated installation do the dirty work !!

And as my friend lugoteehalt above said its blank HDD so nothing really to worry about

hope it helps !!

Alright I got it now, thanks everyone for being so helpful! I'm so glad to be using Linux now. What a difference!