Need help on installing ubuntu&windows7 dual OS

[peteron30]

Hello, I just got my w520 today, and need to set up a dual OS of ubuntu 10.04 and windows 7 on a 256GB Crucial M4 SSD. I need some advice.
1. Should I install 32bit or 64bit version of ubuntu? I have bought 16 GB RAM for upgrades, and want to make sure ubuntu 32bit allows 16GB.
2. Are there any instructions on installing dual OS on W520? I have experiences installing ubuntu 10.04 and windows XP on my old thinkpad T61. Are the procedures similar?
3. To make most of the W520 performance, is there anything that I need to take care of after installing ubuntu, such as the graphic card issue I have read about, and the finger scanner?
4. I do all my work on ubuntu and play games on windows 7. What partition is suggested? I am thinking of leaving 80GB for windows 7. Is that enough? To install the windows 7, can I use the recovery discs I have created from the recovery partition?

I thank for any help here!

[invalidvariable]

responses below prefixed with a ==>

1. Should I install 32bit or 64bit version of ubuntu? I have bought 16 GB RAM for upgrades, and want to make sure ubuntu 32bit allows 16GB.
==> ideally you should install the 64-bit version.. with the 32-bit, you'll need to install the PAE kernel, which may not give the performance that you desire.

2. Are there any instructions on installing dual OS on W520? I have experiences installing ubuntu 10.04 and windows XP on my old thinkpad T61. Are the procedures similar?
==> similarity.. yes and no.. since the bootloader for windows7 has changed and so have the default partition requirements.. there are enough posts on google to help you out

3. To make most of the W520 performance, is there anything that I need to take care of after installing ubuntu, such as the graphic card issue I have read about, and the finger scanner?
==> you can check in ubuntu, if there are any propritory drivers running and let the jockey tool update the same for you, otherwise look for tweaks in the forum and you shall be good to go

4. I do all my work on ubuntu and play games on windows 7. What partition is suggested? I am thinking of leaving 80GB for windows 7. Is that enough? To install the windows 7, can I use the recovery discs I have created from the recovery partition?
==> 80gb is good, if you are not installing a whole lot of games and software and periodically clean the disk of junk using a combination of ccleaner and wise disk cleaner, else you may need more.
incase you crash your system, you can fully restore the windows7 OS using the recovery disks, but albeit, you will lose out your dual boot and later work to restore the grub boot leader to revert to dual boot.

hope this helps.. cheers

[akitaen]

Hi Peteron, I also have w520 and run mostly linux but keep a small Win7 partition in case I need to update bios or call support. I will give advice that is too complex for average user but hope it is useful here.

IMO you should stick with 64 bit linux on this machine. 32 bit Ubuntu works fine on 16GB W520 because of PAE but 64 bit has substantial architectural and performance advantages and hasn't had disadvantage for years.

My best tools for dual-boot preparation are Clonezilla-live CD for backups, and I like Kubuntu1204 for liveCD and Porteus for live USB linux (I am KDE fan). If you can figure out Clonezilla, it is a great way to backup system before you do the dangerous stuff with partition table.

When you have confirmed backup, you can resize the Win partition with one of the linux Parted tools. If you really want Win to be small, you can eliminate the pagefile and the hibernation file; a 16 GB system won't be paging (and you wouldn't want to page gigabytes anyway). Hibernation file is as big as RAM, but not needed if you configure Win to use sleep and shutdown instead. I have forgotten the order I did this in, but you want to configure Win to not use these features and then you can delete the files, saving many gigs. Once you have resized the Win partition, Windows will refuse to use it until Windows has checkdisk'ed it, this is tricky and I had to run the checkdisk on another windows system since windows will not boot before the partition has been confirmed clean.

Here's my partition table:

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   sda1                   Primary  ext4                           22000 
   sda2        Boot       Primary  ext4            [kubu12]       22000
   sda5                   Logical  swap                            6500
   sda6                   Logical  xfs                           412000
   sda4                   Primary  ntfs         [Windows7_OS]     37000

The specifics of these sizes are not important, but this layout works well for me. You have 4 primary partitions, I make sda3 my extended partition, and I like to have several linux partitons so I can test new linux systems and do rotating upgrades (11.10 on one partition, 12.04 on the other). I give myself a swapfile, never seen linux hit it with so much memory. Also this partition order (primary, primary, extended, primary) was tricky to achieve; I used a combination of parted, cfdisk, and fdisk because they all have unique features. The old 'fdisk' has some bugs but it is the only one that is happy to reorder the partition table, a useful trick.

I put Win at the end of the disk because that's the slowest part on factory disk, probably 60MB/s rather than 100. 35G would be too small for this partition with paging and hibernation, but it's plenty for me:

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$ df -h /mnt/sda4
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda4        35G   21G   15G  59% /mnt/sda4

Now for me there's one more trick. I also have the Intel 311 20G msata SSD in this box. I set the bios to boot off the SSD (second drive, /dev/sdb). I prepared it with a clone of the hard disk's Kubuntu partition, but I move big documentation files (man pages etc) to the spinning disk via symlinks. Also my home directories so I can store big stuff off the SSD, and also the /tmp directory since linux does write-back caching and also major read caching, so no speed loss. Here's the SSD's fstab:

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# <file system>                           <mount point>   <type>  <options>                       <dump>  <pass>
proc                                      /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid             0       0
# flash disk is /dev/sdb2
UUID=123-456-abc /               ext4    discard,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro  0  1

# move heavy writes and big crud to sytem mirror on sda1
UUID=543-210-def /mnt/spin       ext4    errors=remount-ro               0       2

# swap is /dev/sda5
UUID=999-123-888 none            swap    sw                              0       0

# bind mount these in normal place from spinner
/mnt/spin/home                            /home           none    rw,bind                         0       2
/mnt/spin/tmp                             /tmp            none    rw,bind                         0       2

# /mnt/space is /dev/sda6
UUID=867-530-911 /mnt/space      xfs     rw,user,noatime,nodiratime      0       2

With this setup, Kubuntu takes 4 gigs on the SSD, boots in 15 seconds, launches Eclipse 3X as fast as the disk based setup. Objectively, SSD's are a pretty minor win. The first time you do anything, it is usually sped up by about 30%, but it can be >100% on big operations. The second time you do anything linux has already cached the disk so you won't be disk bound. I don't spend a huge amount of time doing things the first time, but subjectively the snappiness of first time operations is impressive.

As for Ubuntu drivers for grafix and fingerprints, I don't know. Everything I use worked perfectly out of the box. Optimus stuff is tricky and loaded with compromises yet on the linux side. Discrete GFX (set in bios) works like normal Nvidia but makes the computer warmer and not silent, I use just integrated graphix.

I didn't mean to write a book here... I really like the W520, it is just a monster of a system. I have replaced all my personal servers with virtual machines, gotta love a laptop that can spin 6 full-speed disks and run a half dozen VM's without even audibly spinning the fan.

[peteron30]

I thank very much for the advice above. I just finished the installation of the dual OS on my machine, and am still configuring the system for my taste. The screen looks stunning, and the M4 SSD is making the machine fly. I am really expecting a lot out of this laptop. This is my second thinkpad in 5 years, and second laptop in life!
Here is how I installed the OSs. first I created the recovery media which took 4 DVDR . Then I replaced the SSD in the machine (intel 320 160GB) with a crucial 256GB M4. Using the recovery CDs, I install back windows 7 on the machine, and shrink the size to 90GB, which I am leaving for gaming etc; so I have 150+GB for ubuntu 12.04. I used the 64 bit version as suggested. I feel surprised how this LTS handled the boot menu of dual OS - I didnot need to do a thing after finishing installing. But I felt like cheated when I didnot see an option to do manual partition (I might have missed it). Nonetheless, the setup is satisfying.
As upgrades, I have purchase 4x4gb Kingston PNP RAM, and will plug a 500GB 7200RPM HD from my T61 in the ultrabay. So I am looking for a reliable adapter to do this job, since I will constantly reading and writing data in the HD.
Last, I post the specs of my machine here. I planned to buy a new one after I graduate and get a job next year, but due to the keyboard changing of w230, I want to grasp one asap. This is a refurbished unit with a price of 1k after tax.

Intel® Core™ i7-2760QM Processor (2.40GHz, 8MB L3, 1333MHz FSB)
Windows 7 Professional 64 - English
NVIDIA® Quadro® 1000M
4GB PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz SDRAM SODIMM Memory
15.6" FHD (1920 X 1080) LED Backlight w/ 720p HD Camera"
UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad) with Fingerprint Reader
160GB SATA 1.8" Solid State Drive
DVD Recordable Serial ATA
9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (Up to 2.8 Hours Run Time)
Intel® Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (3x3 AGN)
Bluetooth
Integrated Wireless Wide Area Network upgradable
Fingerprint Reader
1 Year Standard Depot Warranty