Dual boot slackware with pre-installed windows 8
 

I have windows 8 pre-installed on my laptop with five partitions. I have empty one of the partition and want to install slackware onto it. Also i do not want to loose my windows 8 (Original).

I am totally newbie to linux based operating system.

I want a complete step-by-step guide (if possible, along with screenshots) for achieving the same.

Can somebody help me with this?


Regards - Bhushan

This is not something I have had to deal with yet, but you might want to check out this thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...fi-4175448945/

You should research this thoroughly.

As far as I am concerned, Windows "secure boot" is a scam and a fraud.

If you ask me nicely, I'll tell you what I really think.

If you're a total newbie to Linux OS's, then I highly recommend that you first run Slackware (or any other Linux OS) on a separate HDD until you get the hang of it. Or run as a virtual machine or a bootable USB Flash drive.

In the case of a bootable Flash drive, it's recommended that you disconnect your Windows HDD prior to the install, to prevent overwriting the Windows bootloader. Plus most Windows 8 machines now has what's known as "secure boot", which must be disabled to accomplish this. All computer OEM's are different as to how this is implemented, be sure to carefully read how to disable secure boot on your make/model. If it's not in your owner's manual, consult with the OEM for instructions.

There are some instances where the process of setting up a dual boot has bricked the Windows 8 computer, all the more reason why I suggest that you get the proper instructions for your make/model. Something to do with the UEFI. Here is a link with a little more info about dual booting such a computer with Linux.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

Still, as a newbie, I highly recommend that you don't dual boot with Windows 8 on the same HDD. You don't want to torch your Windows 8 install (for now anyway). And as always, be sure to fully back your computer before doing anything. This, you should do regardless of dual boot or not.

Cat

Thanks
 

Thanks for the prompt reply guys.//After going through the post, i have decided to hold on. For the time being i am installing slackware on virtual box. Once confident over the new OS, i'll switch over to dual boot option.

By the way, there are several tips and trick available for windows all over the internet. Is there something for slackware too?

If yes, please post here.

I have installed the slackware successfully onto virtual box. Now i would like to run MS office onto it. (playonlinix works in othe linux distributions). Is there a way by which i can get a fully functional MS Office onto it?

Member Response
 

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

Look at: Slackware Doc Project

Plus;The Slackbook beta is a work in progress.

Hope this helps with your Slackware ventures!

Happy Slacking.

Hi!

In windows you have a number of free partition managers that can split off free space from your current partitions. I used "easus partition master" (free) back when I used Windows.

Be sure to read the documentation for easus partition manager and know what you are doing when you split the partition. I would recommend at least 50GB for Slackware if you can spare it. 150-200GB would be better. Split that from the biggest Windows partition. Easus will show this in a very clear way and is very easy to use. Just make sure you make no mistakes! (always backup your data it says!!)

Restart of Windows is required to accomplish the split. I recommend you empty the new split away the new partition (delete it) so that you can easily see in the Slackware disk management which partition you can use for slackware. (the non existing one that is, the free space)

Once running Slackware or any other Linux distro installation, ALWAYS(!!!!) use the custom partition management option!


I would recommend using a seperate Slackware and home partition. You should create two partitions from the free diskspace, (it will be clear which part is free if you did as above described) one for / and one for /home. Depending on your needs you split the space as you like, but most of the time /home is bigger than / and / should be around 50GB(safe size choice), depending on how much you want to do and experiement and have installed. Perhaps you also want to create a small fat32 partition to move data between Windows and Linux in the easiest possible way. Linux can mount all Windows partitions easy, but Windows cannot do Linux partitions very easily. fat32 is easiest for Windows/Linux file exchange. 5-10GB should be enough?

You probably already tried the Slackware installation process, good, you are a bit familiar with it then!

Slackware will automatically install on / and create your /home. Once the installation of Slackware is near complete, you will get asked about boot manager. It is ALWAYS best to use a Linux boot manager, and in almost all cases in the MBR. I highly recommend using Grub and installing it to MBR. The Windows chainloader can be quite quirky sometimes, especially if partitions change, so be sure to read up a little on that. But in any case, there is nothing to worry about, you can always make Windows boot again by changing the GRUB setup later on!! But you could experience that it does not boot the first time.. Dont panic!

Oooh... And good luck!



Yes, there is something called "wine" which can run Windows programs. But why not try Calligra office or Libreoffice?

Installed the OS
 

Well, I was able to install the SLACKWARE in dual boot mode with windows 8. Both are working fine. when booting into slackware, I am able to see windows based drives and contents but from windows, the slackware partition is not visible.

Anyway, as i started exploring the system, i realized one thing that i am not able to download anything. I basically wanted another browser like chrome or opera. On the default browser of slackware, when i click 'download' link, nothing happens thereafter.

Please let me know, how can i install chrome or opera?

Windows cannot read most Linux file systems, such as ext3 and ext4. Linux, though, does have the capability to read FAT, FAT32, and NTFS, though, depending on your distro, you may have to install the ntfs drivers yourself.

You can install Opera by downloading the *.tar.gz from the Opera website. Uncompress it in your home folder, cd into the directory it creates, then, as root, run the install script (su to root, than run ./install, unless they've changed since my last Opera upgrade). That's the method I've always used on Slackware.

I don't bother with Chrome.

I'm sure that many here would like to know the step-by-step procedure you followed to set up Slackware dual boot with Windows 8, as many have not yet had to deal with Windows 8 and Secure Boot. I think it might merit its own thread.

It is real easy to download most anything you need, just go to slackbuilds.org Type in what you want
and install. You might need to read how to install it but it tells how to do it on the site. There is
also another option to just download the packages you want from "aliens slack packages" or several
others listed on google. Glad to see you start out with Slackware it is remarkable and stable as a
rock.

Microsoft has a history of corruption and making it difficult for people to get anything else than Microsoft, especially for inexperienced users. UEFI is just a workgroup to modernise that effort. Microsoft has always worked closely with Intel and the PC Manufacturers to ensure Microsoft sucks money out of the system with every PC bought by anyone. Today, with every PC you buy, you pay extra money for that PC to have Windows installed on it. Close to €100 for every laptop.

Luckily there are a few options available on the market for non-Microsoft corrupted PCs, and if you study the setup of these vs identical Microsoft corrupted machines, you will find that Microsoft versions either cost more or have the hardware stripped down, for the hardware to cost less and for Microsoft to get the money saved on hardware costs. To get an OEM version of Microsoft intstalled on a whitebox or Linux OS computer from for example Acer, costs almost €100, making the laptop anything from 10% to 25% more expensive.

Microsoft has with deep corruption and cooperation with PC manufacturers and Intel made sure that the market is under full control by less than a dusin companies. Anyone who does not cooperate with Microsoft and Intel will suffer market losses. In a functioning market, anyone who bought a PC would be given an option about which OS they want, and prices would be transparent. People would get options between for example Windows 7 and GNU/Linux and would see that they could save money by having GNU/Linux instead of Microsoft. If the market was like this, a lot more people would be happy to go for GNU/Linux and save €100 on their purchase. This however was never the case.

With the introduction of mobile computing, this iron control of the market has ended. Intel has opened up and is desperate to be able to compete in the microchip market. Microsoft knows that their time is over. Google and Apple has bypass the Microsoft chokehold on the market, by creating a second market with a chokehold even worse than the Microsoft market, and Microsoft is desperate to get involved in it. Both Intel and Microsoft is being punished hard by that second market, and is in a similar way to their lockout before, now locked out of that market.

The loosers in both markets are the consumers, who become deeply ignorant of any other options than the ones that are forced on them. In fact, they are never given any options, even though that could have been possible. In the latest swindle, Microsoft ruined the only company that could have created a market with options. Nokia, could have, with some effort been able to provide Mobile phones with options between 3 operating systems, maybe more, and maybe on a single phone. They could have offered Meego, Android and Windows, and possibly other Linux variants in addition. Microsoft knows that this would have been a disaster. Windows phones needed special hardware adaptations as it was compatible with almost no functions at all. Lacking support for basic things such as sd cards, having limits on possible memory, lacking proper arm implementation, and a range of other non-supported essential hardware features.

So they put a mole into Nokia. Steven Elop from Microsoft. He was introduced as the Nokia saviour. One of the first things he did was to declare Symbian dead. Symbian was still one of the main income sources of Nokia at that point, but after the announcement, Symbian usage plunged and put Nokia into deep financial problems. With a seeming lack of options, Steven Elop commited Nokia to the Windows phone platform and declared that Meego on N9 would be the one and last Meego phone. Nokia than stopped all inhouse OS development and declared they would never use Android. The effects on Nokia was devestating. From being a company with many different Mobile hardwares with a variety of systems, they now became a hardware deliverer for Microsoft, and they had to strip down their phone hardware to support the Windows 7 mobile system. There was so many limits in place that the phone was just poor and bad compared to all the others on the market. By the time Windows 8 for phones has finally been able to support basic mobile hardware options, Nokia was at a point of no return, they had to sell their mobile division, to Microsoft.

Steven Elop got a new fancy job at Microsoft, he was paid €20 million from Nokia to leave and is now the favorite to take over for Steve Ballmer in Microsoft as the CEO.


So, what does the future bring? Looking at todays mobile market, it brings an even tighter chokehold on the whole market, and Microsoft want to compete in that market as well. Consumer control is being taken away with the cloud, there to cloud the mind and control of the consumers and bring control into the clutches of the companies. Is this model also now coming to pc's and laptops?

UEFI is one step closer to that.. Windows 8 is one step closer to that.


THere are options. Please support them! Buy a non Microsoft corrupted laptop or desktop computer. Don't pay Microsoft €100 just to have a laptop. You might not get the newest ultrabooks without Microsoft, but you can get very good hardware without Microsoft. I did, and it was cheap.

If you are a gamer, Steam is now moving away from Microsoft, and might be one the hope and future of GNU/Linux. They might end up saving us if gamers decide to move away from Microsoft to GNU/Linux.


There are options. Build your own desktop computer!!!

Stay away from Microsoft corrupted laptops. Buy only those without an OS or with a GNU/Linux distro!!! It takes time and research, but do it!

Ok, so now i have started getting a hang of it. I successfully updated firefox and installed opera as well. Next query....

how can i create a shortcut for opera and place it in start menu -> Applications -> Internet folder. (This is the place where shortcut for firefox also exists.)

@Zeebra : - Thanks Buddy.....but as per my job profile, I am collecting data from my subordinated, compile it and forward it to my seniors , who in turn suggest changes/approve the same. Now nearly 90% of this data is in MS Access, MS Word and othe MS Office product format. Will there be any compatibility issues if i switch over to other linux office suit? Also please suggest me the best office application to achieve the same.

Which desktop environment did you use?
In KDE it is quite easy, normally it is added automatically into the correct place in the menu structure. If you need to add it manually, it depends on which startmenu you use. I haven't used Slackware for some time, so I don't know what they use as defaults these days, but a right click anywhere in the menu should enable you to add the entry. You can use the editor or add entries directly if you know the commands.

Libreoffice covers most of the functions of Microsoft office, and you are able to "import" Microsoft documents. For all documents that are fine, but I am not sure about Microsoft Access, but I think it should open in Libreoffice "base".
You could ofcourse consider moving to another base system for recording data in, there are more convenient ways than an office enironment suit.

Libreoffice base is a "fork" of OpenOffice which was developed by Sun. Once Oracle bought Sun, most people rapidly moved to alternatives for all their products. MariaDB instead of MySQL, Libreoffice instead of OpenOffice. Perhaps OpenOffice would be better for you, it is also free.

Calligra office is from KDE, perhaps it could do for you as well. All office suits in GNU/Linux is made to be compatible with Microsoft Office formats. Additionally there are lots of tools in GNU/Linux to make such things easier and many alternative solutions, depending on your needs.


In the end, it is also possible to use Microsoft Office with the Wine enviroment or by using Virtualbox.

My desktop environment
 

Sorry for sounding dumb again------:)...

Well, I don't know which desktop environment i am using. I installed Slackware 14.0 and as suggested in the guide, I created a new user at first boot and typed "startx"....and a desktop came-up. This desktop has a start menu which has its application sorted out under system,utilities,Applications and other sub-heads.

Right-clicking anywhere does not give option like "pin to start menu" / "send to desktop create shortcut" like i get in windows..

If you "ls /var/log" you should see some logfiles, most likely one of them should be "kdm" or "gdm". You can also obtain further info by opening the file Xorg.0.log

Perhaps you can make a screenshot of how your desktop look like, maybe with the start menu visible, then we can easily find out. I would think you have KDE, but it could be that you have a Window Manager instead of a desktop enviroment.

Personally I can highly recommend the KDE desktop. If you don't have it, I recommend instaling it!

Here is the snapshot of mu desktop with start menu.

Another problem I installed firefox and opera at following location:- (my user name is "vidya" and i created two folder "Installers" and "Applications" manually)

firefox -> /home/vidya/Applications/firefox
opera -> /home/vidya/Application/opera

the installer packages were downloaded in .tar.bz2 format at /home/vidya/Installers.

Now the adobe flash player is not working. I have downloaded the setup file in .tar,gz format at "/home/vidya/Installers" folder. When i extracted the same i got a "usr" folder and "libflashplayer.so" at "/home/vidya/Installers" location. but still the flash player is not working in both the browsers.

I want to watch youtube videos and adobe flash player is required for the same. Please help me. (Please note i do not know several terminal commands and when i try to copy the same at any other location, i get permission denied message...when i right click "file explore" i do not get any option of "run as root". Windows offers it as "run as administrator"....can i achieve the same in slackware?

You have KDE desktop. That's good. if you click in the upper right corner on the icon there you can "unlock" widgets, which basically opens your desktop to just about any visible changes. The startmenu you are using is called "kickoff".

I don't know it very well. I use the classic KDE start menu. You can also change that, or use both menues by adding the widgets by pressing the icon on the right side of your "panel". By default you can add "kickoff" and the classic KDE menu. Perpahs you will like it better. There you can right click to add. I thin with kickoff you have to right click the "star" icon and select menu editor.

With normal binaries in your "path", you should be able to right click them and add them to the menu.

When you install Firefox manually like you did, it is not in your path, it is simply a folder with a binary and all the necessary files to run it.
Since it is not in your "path" they dont work like normal programs, and they dont utilise the normal Linux libraries in an efficient way.

To properly run a slackware source package, several steps are required: (in command line)
1. tar -zxvf (or perhaps tar -xvf)
2. you need to enter the new folder and run ./configure
3. If ./configure runs fine you can install the program with step 4
4. "make"
5. "make install"

Once this successfully installs Firefox will use the full resources of the system. and be run as a binary from the /usr/bin location which is the preferred and normal place to run user programs from. It should then also place itself in the startmenu automatically.

If Firefox is installed correctly, Flash also needs to be installed correctly, and the flash plugin need to be put in the appropriate folder for Firefox. That can be somewhat confusing.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ectory-521490/

Anyways, forget to run anything as admin, you shouldnt do that, especially not for internet related things, EVER!



Slackware is a great distro if you really want to understand and learn GNU/Linux and have the time and patience to do that. If you are a new user and simply want a running system to perform certain tasks and dont want to put any effort into it, another distribution would be more suitable.

Personally I would strongly recommend the Slackware route if you have the time and patience and if you are prepared for a steep learning curve(steep does not mean difficult).


Good luck!

Right click on the desktop, go down to bottom target "default desktop settings "click" That will bring up a menu, at the top
under "Layout" open and click, Choose "Folder view" Then choose the desktop wallpaper you want and click "apply" then Ok


Go to the menu button that you used to open that menu! Right click on it and change that to "switch to classic menu".
Now bring up the classic menu and look at whatever you want, right click it to desktop or wherever you want it.

You have what you need to run flash it is just in the wrong place. Go to terminal as Root, cd to /home/vidya/Installers
When you get there do a "ls" and make sure it is in that directory. Now copy the libflashplayer.so to where it needs to be.
cp libflashplayer.so /home/vidya/.mozilla/plugins/ Now flash should work!

I have to agree with every word that zeebra posted in #10, MS, though they have controlled the market for years, with UEFI & Windows 8, has tighened the noose more. But here's the problem. Most Windows 8 users hates the OS & many have downgraded to Windows 7 and/or explored Linux options. As for myself, I've been using Linux Mint since the summer of '09, it was named Gloria then. My first attempt was Ubuntu via Wubi, that was a disaster. Tried the standalone Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS & a couple of others before sticking with Mint. It's a great OS, well funded & supported by other means & has an excellent community. And as stated in my avatar, Mint 15 (Mate) is my primary OS.

When MS introduced their latest crap (& I do indeed mean another word beginning with "s", but crap will do on an open forum), they literally shot themselves in the foot. This is the real reason that Steve Ballmer is leaving, he thought that he could create an Apple copycat & has failed. No matter what becomes of Windows 8, it's going down as a failure (worse than Vista) & MS is now at a crossroads as to their future. Fortunately for the OEM's, they're allowed to still distribute Windows 7 computers & they're still selling well. Dell has actually played with Ubuntu distribution, but with little success. Other OEM's, seeing the light, has also started distributing other OS's, in particular, Google. I don't know much about the OS, but do know that it's not freely available for download.

Like zeebra stated, if nothing else, build your own. I am considering it myself, though my issue is, from a hardware standpoint of view, am a Intel/Nvidia fan, which some Linux OS's doesn't always play well with the latest Nvidia GPU's (I recall Linus giving the Nvidia rep the middle finger). So I'm at a crossroads here myself. I refuse to buy a Windows 8 desktop, though I can get the same make/model (Dell XPS 8700) with the latest i7 that has a 1 GB AMD Radeon™ HD 7570 GDDR5 (some models has a NVIDIA equivalent). Here's the model I'm looking at, but still unsure of build or buy. Lots of recent, top notch hardware for the money. That CPU alone costs $349 @ Newegg.

http://www.costco.com/Dell-XPS-8700-...100054130.html

This, I believe is the AMD GPU in this unit, as the AMD Radeon 7570 is GDDR3, the Dell OEM variant is GDDR5, as advertised in the above link.

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/b693/dell-hd-7570.html

Still, for $799 + 30 shipping + sales tax, it's a good buy, lots of hardware for the money & being a Costco Warehouse member, the 1 year warranty is doubled to 2 years.

I'm going to find it hard to build that much machine for the money. So does AMD support Linux better than Nvidia?

I'll be dual booting with Linux Mint myself on the computer. The main reason that I need Windows is because my granddaughter has a hard time with any Linux OS (even the kids ones). She's only 7 years old & likes to play her games that are written primarily for Windows.

And the reason that I truly need so much under the hood is that I like to run virtual machines that can perform as well as a native install. Wimpy computers doesn't run VM's so well. BTW, as soon as that PC is ordered (assuming that I do), 16GB of RAM will be ordered on the same day, to give me 24GB total. That will allow me to run 64 bit VM's with 6GB RAM each.

My concern is also in line with this thread, or I wouldn't have brought it up. Even with Windows 7 preinstalled, it still will have the UEFI BIOS (don't know if Secure Boot is a Windows 8 only feature). Hopefully Mint will run good on a modern machine.

Am also glad that the OP is enjoying initial success, hopefully I can do as well.

Cat