Hi Jason, In June last year, I bought myself a Lenovo Thinkpad E580 laptop. It also came with Windows 10 pre-installed. After googling around the web and some research, I managed to gather a fair bit of info, knowledge bases, how-to forums, etc on how to dual-boot this PC. Later, I successfully installed Ubuntu 18.04, dual-booting with the existing Windows 10 (which I hardly used ever since). Then in August, I compiled all my notes on my dual-boot install experience and gave a talk in that month's LUV Beginners Workshop.
Please find attached my notes (in Markdown format). I didn't include any of the images linked in this notes, but they are just screenshots of my installation. All the useful URLs are near the end of this notes, under References & Resources. Some points to note: - As I had mentioned in my notes, the most important part is a number of preparatory steps. After that, the actual Distro installation itself is usually easy. - Among them, is to keep the UEFI mode (rather than reverting to the 'Legacy' mode), but have the "Secure Boot" turned off (disabled). - Even though a lot of online resources and opinions out there are saying that the most recent Linux distros (e.g. Ubuntu since a couple of years ago) can co-exist with Secure Boot enabled just fine, the majority of the opinions I had come across suggest turning off secure boot before installing a dual-boot linux - for the peace of mind down the track. - For my new Thinkpad, its secure boot was disabled by default when I got it - so I am not sure whether your existing Windows 10 would still boot if you disabled the secure boot that was enabled by default. (Online opinions generally suggest the outcome tend to be dependent on the manufacturer of the PC or its BIOS/UEFI). Did your Lenovo P51 come with secure boot On or Off? - Another thing I found important is the shrinking of your Windows disk partition to make way for your Linux distro install. In a sense this also depends on the size of your PC's hard disk. If your disk is large (say from 500 GB to 1 or more TB), then you can just use the Windows built-in Disk Management tool to shrink your Windows partition to as low as you can get - but this usually gives you a blank partition that is less than half of the total disk size. However, if your laptop disk is relatively small (like mine, which is a SSD with only 256 GB), then you can consider using a third-party Windows tool - say: AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard (free) - which can allow you to squeeze/shrink your Windows disk partition to even further - to slightly lower than half the total disk space - thereby giving you a larger blank partition to install your distro. (A couple of URLs in my notes talk about this in great details). I hope my notes here can be of help to your dual-boot attempt. I'm sure you will get there eventually! All the best! Regards, Wen On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 11:54 PM Jason White via luv-main < [email protected]> wrote: > Just to answer the questions below: > > The braille output is controlled by whatever screen reader is in use, and > screen readers are specific to each operating system. There is no output > available until the screen reader is loaded (it's the same with text to > speech in that respect). I recall an effort to integrate braille support > into Grub, so that one could access the Grub menus independently. I can't > remember how far that progressed, but I know where to ask. > > There's one possible option for enabling me to read BIOS/UEFI menus, > namely remote administration facilities. The Lenovo P51 laptop, for > example, has Intel Management Engine installed, though not presently > configured. If it supports a serial console or similar, I could access it > from another machine. I haven't investigated the details, but I'm > interested. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Mark Trickett <[email protected]> > Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2019 4:33 AM > To: Jason White <[email protected]>; luv-main <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Contemplating a complex UEFI-based Linux installation > > Hello Jason, > > On 1/23/19, Jason White via luv-main <[email protected]> wrote: > > I have a Lenovo P51 laptop here (currently running Microsoft Windows > > 10) on which I'm contemplating installing Linux - probably Arch Linux, > > or perhaps Debian Testing - or another distribution that is kept fairly > up to date. > > Arch > > is of interest in that the packages are kept fairly close to upstream, > > which could be useful for some of my purposes (e.g., reporting bugs on > > accessibility-related tools such as braille display software and > > screen readers, and compiling development versions thereof). > > Thank you for being involved in such ways. I know another blind computer > user, but in the USA, who is effectively tied to Microsoft, and loathes it. > As a diabetic, braille output is not an option, and should the screen > reader not work, the computer is unusable, and very difficult to fix, they > have "sighted minions" who are far from computer literate. As such the BIOS > screens are unavailable. > > > I need to keep Microsoft Windows around for work purposes, due to > > compatibility issues. I'm contemplating a dual-boot configuration. I > > would rather not turn off Microsoft's virtualization-based security, > > which requires Secure Boot to be enabled; unfortunately, there are too > > many vulnerabilities and plenty of Windows malware is circulating. > > I can understand and sympathize. Requiring the use of Microsoft software > says someone is not competent. That is not you. > > > On the Windows side, I have enabled Device Guard and Credential Guard > > in local group policy, set to require "secure boot with UEFI lock". I > > don't know whether this will complicate Linux installation, or whether > > it will need to be disabled, even temporarily. > > > > At this point, neither an Arch ISO image (written to a USB drive with > > dd) nor a GRML64 image will boot. I suspect Secure Boot is > > responsible, unless of course this system cannot boot from these > > prepared ISO images. > > Were I any way close, I would like to offer to be your eyes for the BIOS > and the like before the OS comes up. Whether it comes up on the braille > output, it may miss out on some characters outside the standard ASCII set. > That may be significant. > > > I've read documentation on the Arch wiki and elsewhere about UEFI and > > Secure Boot, most of which is not very clear or somewhat incomplete. > > There are several boot loaders from which to choose, for example, as > > well as complications with Secure Boot. I've installed Arch before > > (and Debian more than once), but only on BIOS-based systems and never > > with another operating system also present. Further, there are various > > reports of mixed success with Linux on this particular laptop model. > > It isn't clear what information is up to date. > > > > Also, I want to avoid corrupting the UEFI firmware or data in ways > > that would necessitate board replacement; I've had to deal with > > unrelated hardware issues recently and definitely don't want to have > > to go through the pain of that experience again, if I can avoid it. > > > > So, what would be my best source of advice at this point on how to > proceed? > > Suggestions and links would be welcome. I'm also willing to discuss it > > with someone who knows UEFI well, if necessary. > > Knowing UEFI is the start, being there and seeing what messages flash up > on the monitor, and then disappear is also important. I suspect that > partial and poor implementations of UEFI may well be adding to the > confusion and misinformation you see. > > To finish, some questions. When you browse a website, does the braille > output include all the HTML, or just the text, or can you toggle between > how much you get? Does the braille output work with the BIOS?UEFI screens? > Is there a braille output device that also "speaks" > the output? > > Regards, > > Mark Trickett > > _______________________________________________ > luv-main mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.luv.asn.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luv-main >
<link rel = "stylesheet" type = "text/css" href = "wlinStyle.css" /> ## LUV Beginners Workshop ## August 2018 Talk # Title: Dual-booting Windows 10 & Ubuntu - The fun, the pain, the joy ... ### Date: 25 August 2018 Sat ### By Wen Lin ### Email: [email protected] ### At: Infoxchange, Richmond, VIC --- ## Introduction - scope of my talk Welcome to another one of LUV Monthly Workshops - for the month of August. Today I will introduce the various methods of running multiple operating systems on one computer. Focus will of course be on the method called "Dual-boot" - specifically, Windows 10 and Linux on one computer. Since we can always get tons of documentation on the web, or videos on Youtube, on all details about installing Windows & Linux dual-boot on a PC, I won't be spending the entire presentation on just the how-to's. Instead, I will cover this topic from my own recent experience installing dual-boot OSs on a laptop. I will share with you the fun, the pain, some frustration, and the joy in finally getting a stable Ubuntu 18.04 running alongside a Windows 10 OS. I will also touch on a few things related to dual-boot installation on modern computers - e.g. UEFI, Secure Boot, Grub2, and disk partitioning. --- ## Different methods of running multiple OSs on one computer ... - Dual-boot (or multiple-boot). - Install a linux distro within a Windows OS - Wubi (Win7 only). - Install a linux distro on a Google Chromebook and have it running side-by-side with Chrome OS - via Crouton. - Use Virtual Machine - on VMware, Virtualbox, Hyper-V, etc. - Windows VM running on a Linux Hypervisor (e.g. Virtualbox, KVM), or - Linux VM running on a Windows Hypervisor (e.g. Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware Workstation). --- ## What is the meaning of dual-boot? A computer with two operating systems. At startup, a boot manager program lets the user choose which one to load. #### Why would I want to Dual Boot? - There are many reasons people choose to dual boot between two or more systems. - Some systems offer programs or utilities that others do not. (e.g. Photoshop, MYOB, Windows-only Games, etc). - Some people simply prefer the freedom of multiple operating systems or just don't want to choose only one system. - Others probably feel that they had already paid for the pre-installed Windows OS when they bought their computer. So don't want to see it overwritten. --- ## Pre-Modern day dual-boot - BIOS - On Windows XP or Windows 7 computers. - No UEFI, no Secure Boot. - Dual-boot with a Linux Distro usually very easy ... ## Modern day dual-boot - Win10 & Latest version of Linux Distro (e.g. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) on a modern PC ... - UEFI - Secure Boot (On or Off) --- ## Some fact-finding exercise before starting a dual-boot install - Reasons: Don't want to make the wrong choices and wasting time ... - This part can take time (be patient) ... the actual installation itself is simple nowadays. - Brand new modern PC or a secondhand old PC - 32-bit or 64-bit - CPU, memory, disk capacity,networking, ... - BIOS, UEFI, Secure Boot on or off, ... --- ## Some discussion about UEFI & Secure Boot. - UEFI - Unified Extensible Firmware Interface. - BIOS - Basic Input/Output System. - MBR - Master Boot Record. - GPT - GUID Partition Table. - The UEFI is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. - UEFI replaces the BIOS firmware interface originally present in all IBM PC-compatible personal computers. - UEFI firmware provides several technical advantages over a traditional BIOS system: - Ability to use large disks (over 2 TB) with a GUID Partition Table (GPT) - CPU-independent architecture - CPU-independent drivers - Flexible pre-OS environment, including network capability - Modular design - Backward and forward compatibility (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface) - MBR disks use the standard BIOS partition table, whereas GPT disks use UEFI. - One advantage of GPT disks is that you can have more than four partitions on each disk. GPT is also required for disks larger than two terabytes (TB). - Microsoft Secure Boot is a component of Microsoft's newer Windows OSs (8, 10 and later) that relies on the UEFI specification's secure boot functionality to help prevent malicious software applications and "unauthorized" operating systems from loading during the system start-up process. --- ## General outline of a dual-boot install (all the steps involved): - **Step 1: Make a backup of your existing Windows OS & data.** - Normal backup/copy all your data files to a USB disk. - Create a recovery drive in Windows 10. - Create a system image in Windows 10. - Create a system repair disc. - **Step 2: Create a live USB/disk of Ubuntu** - Download a distro - Using the tools below to get the job done: - Universal USB Installer (Windows - BIOS compatible, Linux) - Rufus (Windows - UEFI compatible) - Startup Disk Creator (Ubuntu) - **Step 3: Make a partition where Ubuntu will be installed** - Using Windows cmd & tools - diskpart or Disk Management utility. - Also can use some 3rd party tools - to give more disk space to the Ubuntu partition. - Or can use GParted from a Live Linux Distro. - **Step 4: Disable fast startup in Windows [optional] (but advisable)** - It's very important to disable Fast Startup before installing GRUB, because whether the Ubuntu installer can detect Windows' presence depends on how Windows represents itself in the boot partition. With Fast Startup properly disabled, it should be detected. - **Step 5: Disable secureboot in Windows 10 and 8.1** - This is an important consideration. The new secure boot feature of Windows 10, originally intended for security feature for rootkit viruses, prevents dual booting of Windows with Linux. To dual boot Windows 10 with Linux, it is best to disable secure boot in UEFI. - Newer version of Linux (e.g. Ubuntu 18.04) can nowadays be installed side-by-side nicely with a Win10 with Secure Boot ON. - But there may be issues when you want to install some 3rd party drivers on the Distro - there may be some extra steps (and extra precautions) involved. - **Step 6: Boot from USB Stick or CD** - Try to live boot the distro on the PC - checking around, make sure everything, incl. Internet - work OK. No driver issue, etc. - **Step 7: Preparing to Install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS** - Start the install ... - Boot up with the distro - If have Internet, can select running updates during install, plus 3rdparty SW install ... - Disk partition ... Use default or manual partition - also consider split / & /home partitions. - Talk a bit about the swap space ... - Enter hostname, user name, password, encrypt HD?, - Select time zone. Enable NTP. - Let it run ... - Install completed - reboot. - Run first full updates. - Install more SW - GUI, apt, or snap (brief intro each of them ...) - A brief list & short intro of several popular FOSS - compare each of them with their own Windows (or Mac) equivalents. - Wanting to change some settings (e.g. bootup sequence) using grub2. - Install GUFW (GUI version of ufw) - enable FW, use default: allow all outgoing, block all incoming ... - What happened when things go wrong? - it crashes on startup. - It always just boot into Windows. - To do: Boot up with Rescue disk, ## Swap Space - Swap space in Linux is used when the amount of physical memory (RAM) is full. If the system needs more memory resources and the RAM is full, inactive pages in memory are moved to the swap space. While swap space can help machines with a small amount of RAM, it should not be considered a replacement for more RAM. - More swap space used - system becomes slower, performance degraded. - **Is it still bad to use swap on a modern SSD?** - Some comments: Still today Flash RAM cells built in SSDs have a limited lifespan. Every write (not read) cycle or better every erasure wears a memory cell and at some time it will stop working. The amount of erase cycles a cell can survive is highly variable, and flash from modern SSDs will do much better than some years ago. In addition the intelligent firmware will take care of evenly distributed erasures between all the cells. In most drives unused areas will also be available to backup damaged cells and to delay aging. To have a value we can use to compare the endurance of an SSD JEDEC published standards to measure the life span of an SSD. A widely available value for endurance is TBW (TeraBytes Written, some also say total bytes written) which says how many bytes we can write before failure of the drive. Modern SSDs can be as low as 20TB for a consumer product but can reach more that 20.000 TB in an enterprise-level SSD. Having said that, both, the lifespan, and the use of an SSD for swap depends... System with plenty of RAM On a system with plenty of RAM and not so many memory consuming applications we will almost never use swap. It is merely a safety measure to prevent data loss in case an application ate up all our RAM. In this case wearing of an SSD from swap will not be an issue. But then having this mostly unused swap on a conventional hard drive will not lead to any performance drop so we can safely put our swap on that so much cheaper hard drive and use the gained space on our SSD for something more useful. System with too little RAM Things are different on a system where RAM is preciously rare and can not be upgraded. Then swapping may indeed occur more often, especially in cases we run memory intensive applications. In these systems a swap on SSD may lead to a dramatic improvement of performance. But this is at cost of a somewhat shorter lifespan of the SSD. This may however still not be that short to be worried. It may more liekly that by the time we find our SSD is dying we already had long thought of replacing it because 10 times the storage will cost only a fraction of what it does today. We need to hibernate Well, waking from hibernation is indeed very fast from a SSD. If we are lucky and our system survives a hibernation without issues we may consider to use an SSD for that. It will wear the SSD more than just booting from it, but we may fell it is worth it. But admittedly booting from an SSD may not take much longer, and it will wear the SSD far less. I do not hiberante, I suspend to RAM. or I enjoy the very fast booting from SSD. The SSD is the only drive we have In this case we do not really have a choice. We do not want to run without swap so we must put it on the SSD. We may however want to choose a smaller swap partition in case we do not plan to hibernate. Note on speed SSDs are best in quickly accessing and reading many small files and data transfer from sequentially reading small or medium sized files are better than conventional hard drives. For writing and to a lesser extent reading large audio or video streams or other long not fragmented files a conventional fast hard drive may still perform better. Older SSDs may lose performance over time or after they are fairly full. (Source: https://askubuntu.com/questions/652337/why-no-swap-partitions-on-ssd-drives ) --- <div class="images"> <div class="float margin_right"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180620_210717.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180620_210717.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span>The PC's existing disk partitions, from the Windows point of view</span> </div> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <div class="float margin_right"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180623_064550.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180623_064550.jpg" /></a> <span>Create a recovery drive</span> </div> <div class="float margin_right"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180623_064915.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180623_064915.jpg" /></a> <span>Select the USB flash drive</span> </div> <div class="float margin_right"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180623_073717.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180623_073717.jpg" /></a> <span>Copying system ...</span> </div> <div class="float margin_right"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180623_075918.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180623_075918.jpg" /></a> <span>Creating a system image</span> </div> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180623_221523.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180623_221523.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span>Shrink the Windows disk partition to make space for the Ubuntu installation. </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180624_224343.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180624_224343.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> Change Power settings in Windows 10. </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180624_225034.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180624_225034.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> UEFI Boot Menu </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180624_225903.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180624_225903.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> Start Ubuntu installation. </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180624_225959.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180624_225959.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> Ubuntu Installation: Updates and other software ... </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180624_230035.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180624_230035.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> Ubuntu Installation: Installation type. </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180625_224214.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180625_224214.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> Ubuntu Installation: disk partitioning ... 1 </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180625_224252.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180625_224252.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> Ubuntu Installation: disk partitioning ... 2 </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180625_234303.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180625_234303.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> Ubuntu Installation: disk partitioning ... 3 </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180625_234628.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180625_234628.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> Ubuntu Installation: disk partitioning ... 4 </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180625_234700.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180625_234700.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> Ubuntu Installation: disk partitioning ... 5 </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180625_234756.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180625_234756.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> Ubuntu Installation: disk partitioning ... 6 </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180626_000354.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180626_000354.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180626_000435.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180626_000435.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <div class="images"> <a href="./images/IMG_20180626_000457.jpg"><img src="./images/IMG_20180626_000457.jpg" width="100px" height="100px" /></a> <span> </span> <span class="clear"></span> </div> <br><br><br> --- # References & Resources ... [How to Install Ubuntu 18.04 Alongside With Windows 10 or 8 in Dual Boot ( itzgeek.com )](https://www.itzgeek.com/how-tos/linux/ubuntu-how-tos/how-to-install-ubuntu-18-04-alongside-with-windows-10-or-8-in-dual-boot.html) [How to Install Ubuntu 18.04 Dual Boot with Windows 10 ( linoxide.com )](https://linoxide.com/distros/install-ubuntu-18-04-dual-boot-windows-10/amp/?usqp=mq331AQCCAE%3D&_js_v=0.1#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Flinoxide.com%2Fdistros%2Finstall-ubuntu-18-04-dual-boot-windows-10%2F) [How can I dual-boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu on a UEFI HP notebook? ( askubuntu.com )](https://askubuntu.com/questions/666631/how-can-i-dual-boot-windows-10-and-ubuntu-on-a-uefi-hp-notebook) [How To Dual boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu on UEFI systems ( pcsuggest.com )](https://www.pcsuggest.com/dual-boot-windows-10-and-ubuntu-uefi/) [How to Shrink C Drive beyond Limit Successfully in Windows? ( disk-partition.com )](https://www.disk-partition.com/articles/shrink-c-drive-3889.html) [How to Resize UEFI GPT System Partition Easily and Safely? ( disk-partition.com )](https://www.disk-partition.com/gpt-mbr/resize-uefi-system-partition-1004.html) [Managing EFI Boot Loaders for Linux: Dealing with Secure Boot ( rodsbooks.com )](http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/secureboot.html) [UEFI - Community Help Wiki ( help.ubuntu.com )](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI) [How to Rescue a Non-booting GRUB 2 on Linux ( www.linux.com )](https://www.linux.com/learn/how-rescue-non-booting-grub-2-linux) [How Much Swap Should You Use in Linux? ( itsfoss.com )](https://itsfoss.com/swap-size/) [Is it still bad to use swap on a modern SSD? - Ask Ubuntu ( )](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1032082/is-it-still-bad-to-use-swap-on-a-modern-ssd) [Managing EFI Boot Loaders for Linux: Basic Principles ( rodsbooks.com )](http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/principles.html) [kernel - Why disabling "Secure Boot" is enforced policy when installing 3rd party modules - Ask Ubuntu ( askubuntu.com )](https://askubuntu.com/questions/755238/why-disabling-secure-boot-is-enforced-policy-when-installing-3rd-party-modules) [How To Install Ubuntu Alongside Windows 10 ( itsfoss.com )](https://itsfoss.com/install-ubuntu-1404-dual-boot-mode-windows-8-81-uefi/) [Recover from a badly corrupt Linux EFI installation ( dedoimedo.com )](https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub2-efi-corrupt-part-recovery.html) <br><br><br><br><br> --- # Q & A ... -----
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