dual booting windows/opensuse

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I’m attempting to install OpenSuse Tumbleweed on a new laptop (Acer Touch 12) with an already existing Windows installation. I had already tried this by going with the installation prompt (auto) but only Windows booted up. Upon further looking online, I understood that I needed to manually partition plus edit the windows boot partition to /boot. So trying it again, my main objective is to delete the partitions the previous install created and replace them with simply “/” and swap. When I got to the expert partition screen I saw a lot of partitions listed and really want to be careful not to delete anything windows related. I’ve included a picture of the the partition list. Noticed I can’t do attachments here so here’s a link to flickr https://www.flickr.com/gp/rkonrad/537b85

Which are safe to delete? Thanks!

Richard

#2

You’d better create some free space from Windows. If you want to use btrfs I suggest a minimum of ~60GB. And make sure FastBoot is disabled.

#3

Hi and welcome to the Forum :slight_smile:
I would suggest also grabbing the live USB of Tumbleweed and booting from that to check all is good with the hardware etc.

Now unless there is something specific for the windows install, you can download the latest iso image for windows (direct from Microsoft) to re-install, WinX key is stored in the BIOS so will re-activate if you need to re-install (and in WinX case when it upgrades the build it will create yet another small partition).

Also if booting from the live USB can also post the information about the disk partitioning (lsblk gdisk etc).

The standard is sda1, type ef00 and around 200MB for /boot/efi (all OSes), sda2, type 0c01 16MB reserved for windows, after that it’s what ever you want, I’m sure there is also an Acer image for recovery, those I normally dd to an image stored on an external usb device (never used one yet).

#4

What went wrong last time was an additional 500M ESP partition was created instead of reusing the existing 100M ESP partition. An unfortunate and misleading message by the installer induces many to make that mistake. While it is technically OK to have a separate ESP for each OS, it requires intervention of the UEFI BIOS each time you wish to boot the other OS than what was booted last.

No /home partition was created. The prior installation created:

/dev/sda5 500M ESP #2
/dev/sda6 35G BTRFS
/dev/sda7 2G swap

You could delete all those at any time, before or during openSUSE installation. As Knurpht wrote, best place to start is have Windows itself create needed freespace - normally. However, with so small an SSD as you have, both Windows and openSUSE would be crowded by a partition scheme materially different from what is already in place. The only change I suggest to make is to delete sda5 and sda6 and recreate sda5 using the combined space of those two. Then have the installer utilize the EXT4 filesystem type for openSUSE on sda5 instead of BTRFS, which would be troublingly small because of its snapshotting. openSUSE should use the existing /dev/sda1 ESP partition mounted on /boot/efi/. You should ignore the error message about 100M being a too small size.

In the future, please try to use https://susepaste.org/ for image uploads. The one you created is too small for me to be sure I understood what I was seeing, and very difficult to force to a large enough size to make out anything at all.

#5

Burn a netinstall image to USB stick and boot from that.

Upon further looking online, I understood that I needed to manually partition plus edit the windows boot partition to /boot. So trying it again, my main objective is to delete the partitions the previous install created and replace them with simply “/” and swap. When I got to the expert partition screen I saw a lot of partitions listed and really want to be careful not to delete anything windows related. I’ve included a picture of the the partition list. Noticed I can’t do attachments here so here’s a link to flickr https://www.flickr.com/gp/rkonrad/537b85

Which are safe to delete? Thanks! Richard
You may safely delete sda5, sda6 and sda7. Mount sda1 as efi system partition at /boot/efi. Create / and swap as needed.

When done with the installation you will want to boot opensuse. It has a menu offering Tumbleweed as default and Windows as another option.

Watch for boot order:

erlangen:~ # efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0004
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0004,0000,0001,0002,0003,0005,000B,000C
Boot0000* opensuse      HD(4,GPT,0497bfdf-73d7-47a8-9d8e-6b911574f774,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\OPENSUSE\GRUBX64.EFI)
Boot0001* Fedora        HD(4,GPT,0497bfdf-73d7-47a8-9d8e-6b911574f774,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\FEDORA\SHIMX64.EFI)
Boot0002* ubuntu        HD(4,GPT,0497bfdf-73d7-47a8-9d8e-6b911574f774,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\UBUNTU\SHIMX64.EFI)
Boot0003* Manjaro       HD(1,GPT,2fe6b58a-379a-4f6e-899b-8be22ef6e885,0x800,0x32800)/File(\EFI\MANJARO\GRUBX64.EFI)
Boot0004* opensuse-secureboot   HD(4,GPT,0497bfdf-73d7-47a8-9d8e-6b911574f774,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\OPENSUSE\SHIM.EFI)
Boot0005* arch  HD(1,GPT,2fe6b58a-379a-4f6e-899b-8be22ef6e885,0x800,0x32800)/File(\EFI\ARCH\GRUBX64.EFI)
Boot000B* ubuntu        HD(4,GPT,0497bfdf-73d7-47a8-9d8e-6b911574f774,0x800,0x32000)/File(\EFI\UBUNTU\GRUBX64.EFI)..BO
Boot000C* opensuse      HD(1,GPT,2fe6b58a-379a-4f6e-899b-8be22ef6e885,0x800,0x32800)/File(\EFI\OPENSUSE\GRUBX64.EFI)..BO
erlangen:~ #
#6

Thanks to all for their excellent advice. Sorry for the late reply. In the end my son opted not to have a linux system along side of windows. Though I will have a better idea on how to do it next time.

Cheers!

#7

I decided to dual boot with windows to avoid having another machine around for camera etc firmware. I created a memory stick install following an opensuse guide. No problems with dual booting at all but I did set my own partitioning. No swap as well which was mentioned on here last time I was around - providing enough ram is available.

Main problem was with windows itself. It had a recovery partition in an unfortunate place. I repartitioned under windows to set a size for it and also moved the recovery partition. Then installed opensuse. Windows wouldn’t work correctly until a registration email arrived but no longer seems to be making any use of it’s recovery partition. HP machine so this may be unique to them. 1TB pci ssd and windows would have to have used rather a lot of it if I left the recovery partition where it was or the Linux part would have to have been split around it. I use it for /home so wasn’t keen on this. The os is on another ssd.

John

#8

Hi
Since it’s WinX on that machine, blow away the recovery (and all the carp-ware :wink: and just download a WinX iso image from MS if you ever need it… WinX activation is tied to the BIOS hardware key, so a re-install of WinX is easy… WinX will install any necessary drivers, or is some specific one, just vist HP Support, pop in the system serial number to get any specific drivers to install. BIOS updates can be done off a USB device, or create an efi directory (Likely already there) HP_TOOLS to place any updates in…

#9

Interesting. This page runs through how microsoft handle keys now

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/want-to-make-iso-file-for-winx-backup/a566995e-b7d5-4150-bfb0-05c66d84a77a

Makes me wonder if I could re install windows under a VM to save rebooting. There is no other way of handling some items firmware updates. Has to be via windows or mac. Wine so far has never handled the software that is needed. It usually partially functions. :wink: Suppose I could try the very latest but wouldn’t hold out much hope.

Actually if some one wants to try linux from windows a VM is not a bad way of doing it. I’d suggest Virtualbox plus their extension. It’s very simple to use and in my experience bomb proof and doesn’t add much extra loading at all. I started that way a long time ago but the VM was more difficult. I used a pirate version of VMware as it was rather expensive. Not long after I switched initially with windows in the VM and later dropped it.

For dual booting many machines have spare disk / ssd slots. That’s what I have done on this machine. Installed one and Linux is on it. Boot as well. My /home ls elsewhere but could be on the added ssd. The opensuse partitioner that is used for install is the simplest Linux one I am aware of and the Linux aspect doesn’t use much space at all.

John

#10

Hi
Yes should work fine in a VM, I use KVM…