Ubuntu – How to dual-boot Ubuntu + Windows 8 on a Samsung Series 9 laptop

Dual Boot Win7 and 12.04 putting MBR with Grub2 into /dev/sda.

With this answer, each time that i boot, i get the grub2 boot menu listing options for 12.04 and Win7.

The SSD on this system is 256G and, from the OEM Win7 install, i wanted to get rid of the Hibernate and the Recovery Partitions , reclaiming and additional 30GB of space to allocate between Win7 and 12.04.

STEPS for INSTALL

on Win7, use 'DISKPART' app in a shell to reduce the size of the main, C partition from 208GB to 100GB. You can use the "shrink querymax" to evaluate how much you can reduce the C:\ partition. Mine said i could go down to 100G from 208GB so, in a couple of cycles in the shell, using shrink, i freed up about 105GB .

When i left windows to boot from the USB stick, i had:

1. about 100 GB unalloacted,
2. 100Mg in the SYSTEM partition - for Win7
3. 100GB in the C:\ partition    - for Win7
4. 8GB Hibernate -  unwanted, how to delete? answer is below
5. 21GB Recovery -  unwanted, windows restore/recovery will be manual - how to delete?

With Care, create the USB stick bootable on drive with > 4GB

Lots of misinformation on the WEB! I wasted 6 hours on this one.

1. Format a USB drive using step #4 - http://www.ehow.com/how_5937471_format-usb-flash-drive-dos.html
2. Download the 64b, AMD Desktop linux iso - http://releases.ubuntu.com/12.04/
3. Download/install Unetbootin - http://http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
4. Tell the Unet dialog that you want to use the downloaded ISO to copy to the formatted USB

Make required changes to Default samsung BIOS BEFORE trying to change the BOOT order

1. TURN OFF bios/advanced/fast BIOS mode

i wasted alot of time here too. I guess that they did something to maximize wake from sleep to the SSD but, it prevents you from booting a USB. Turn it OFF.

1. DISABLE - bios/boot/UEFI mode boot

-EDIT : i use Win7 and UEFI is disable

Change Boot order in BIOS

this is standard reorder of boot options.

USB HHD should preceed the hard drive.

Insert the USB stick into one of the 2, USB slots on the right-hand side.

Boot and you should go into the well documented Ubuntu install dialogs.

In the UBUNTU system that comes up, start ‘gparted’ in order to deallocate additional space. In Dashhome, the upperleft icon in Unity, i think u can search for “Gparted”. It will come up showing 4 windows partions ( 2 that you need to keep are the 100Mg SYSTEM , and the big C:\ partition at around 100GB ).

1. Use GParted to delete “Recovery 21 GB”
2. use GParted to delete “Hibernate 8 GB”

You are now ready to do the install. At this point , i had about 145GB for the Ubuntu install. Just click the install icon on the main screen and you are away on the install dialog.

Allocated the following in a new, Extended partition created during the ubuntu install where i selected the 3rd option to instruct it on partition details:

/boot logical 500Mg
/ (root) logical 40GB
/home logical 80GB

NOTE: 20GB remained unallocated after the above were taken from the available disk.

Note: no swap! what with 8GB ram. i will worry about swap later.

EDIT - Mainline kernel. Note that in the months following the install, my only complaints were occaisional UI freezes and the kernel support for Intel integrated HD4000 chipset. Had alot of problems with WebGL/Chrome browser. Solved the problems by upgrading the kernel to relatively recent ubuntu mainline kernel and by using the 'chrome-beta' release of the browser.

You need to purge and reinstall GRUB this way:

1. run Boot-Repair --> Advanced options
2. go to the "GRUB options" tab, tick "Purge GRUB then reinstall it"
3. click Apply

Indicate the new URL that will appear if any problem.