Grief installing dual-boot on Dell G3 laptop

Rocky Linux Help & Support
1

I an not a guru, and particularly not a Windows + bios geek.

I saw that it was recommended to install using rufus to create a bootable USB.

I did the following on the working Windows laptop:

The laptop has a 256G SSD.

O Disabled fast startup
O Enabled various functions on the thunderbolt port, whch doesn’t seem to have been relevant.
O Disabled bitlocker on C:
O Disabled secure boot.
O Created a partition for Linux by
o Turn off paging file on C:
o Turn off hibernate
o Ensured protection is off.
o deleted all restore points.
Found windows still wouldn’t shrink the C: partition and disit with a dedicated tool.
o created a D: partition in the freed-up space.

I used Rufus to create a USB and, after realising it had to be GPT, I created a FAT32 USB.

That USB boots, and does what it should EXCEPT it is useless because it does not detect/mount the NTFS partitions, so you can’t install.

I used rufus to create a USB with GPT, but NTFS.

That creates a first NTFS partition which doesn’t boot - moans about a missing file and does nothing useful.
The second partition doesn’t boot either.

At one time, on a different ( smaller ) USB stick, I got a little further with such a second partition.

So, really I have two questions.

Can I add NTFS support to the FAT32 image so it can install to D:

LATER: I see other people say they couldn’t work with NTFS is it is set to raid mode. - that could be the problem I guess as I seen to remember it is.

Or is there a way to install rocky more directly in the D: partition without booting from a USB and running the installer?

Of course if anyone can tell me what I should be doing fel free.

2

You cannot install Linux on NTFS partitions. You need to create new ones, that are specifically for Linux.

Rufus should be used in DD mode to use the ISO on the USB stick. Chances are you are using the wrong mode in Rufus.

But even so, if you want to install Rocky or any other Linux, you need to be able to repartition your disks and they need to have free space to create partitions that can be formatted with a Linux filesystem.

3

Thanks so much.

I may be being too ambitious trying to add a dual-boot to an existing laptop - I don’t use Windows much. Maybe I need to just wipe it and run windows in a VM.

Or I could just buy a separate SSD and stick it in the 2nd slot!

Assuming I am trying to push this dual-boot idea on…

I have reduced the windows partition in the SSD to 200G

That left me with 235G of empty space. I made what seems to be the mistake of turning it into an NTFS partition, in the mistaken belief that I could install rocky there.

Clearly I should either have left it empty, or set up up as some other format. ext4?

I see from other notes that setting up a separate partition for a swap area is common, though a swapfile can also be used. I guess a 200 + 35 split would be reasonable?

Do you by any chance know of an up-to-date how to for this game? The stuff I found on the web seems to predate bitlocker, TPM, secure boot and all such new features.

David

4

I personally don’t. There are people who dual boot, I haven’t had Windows on any of my hardware since 2005. So I’m just Linux everywhere, but I do have a VM with Windows if I ever need it. Far easier than dual boot.

5

Last time I did dual boot, I added a new SSD, and then booted into Win7 to ensure I could see the new (unallocated) disk; I did NOT tell windows to initialize it. I then shut down Win7, and booted into a real CentOS DVD, the installer was able to see the new disk and I told it to install to it. I then used the BIOS menu to choose between Win7 and CentOS. In general, you want both secure boot and GPT for both Windows and Linux.

6

Yes you should have left it empty. You can delete the partition in windows disk manager.
On booting a Rocky 9.6 install disk go to the destination device tab or whatever it is called and select the empty partition and choose the default install option.
The default install creates 3 partitions; the first a few 100 MB /boot/efi formatted as vfat, the second partition of 1 GB /boot formatted as xfs and the third the remainder divided between root “/” and /home formatted as xfs lvms. I don’t know what percentage of the remaining space is used between the two.
USERS: I always create a root password but that is not necessary as long as you set up “your user” with administrative priviliges. Not doing so will leave you with a system you can’t maintain.
I would read the Rocky linux documentation. There are installation instructions on the main site as well as administration. Do read these, linux is free but the real freedom is to know how it works and you need to learn some of the basics or you’ll be frustrated when you want to tailor your system to your needs.

7

Thanks jbkt23

I have concluded that my USB installer is unable or unwilling to notice the SSD at all, so it doesn’t offer me the option to install into the gap ( now empty ) which I intended for it. I have some suspicion this might relate to ‘WIndows raid’.

I have decided I’m quite happy to buy a new SSD, and try for a clean-install using the USB stick. I haven’t worked out what my next move is if even that SSD does not get offered as an install target.

I intended to set a root p/w and create a named user for myself, though I might drop root access once everything is ticking.

TVM

8

Do you mean you have some raid option set in the BIOS, or do you mean you have set up software raid in windows, or do you mean you have a big hardware raid controller?

If you can “shell out” of the linux installer, it should be possible to do ‘lsblk’ or ‘lshw’