I have, as of a couple of days a new Lenovo G50 80 laptop/notebook It runs on an i3-5005U processor which I believe is 64 bit and deal core and that is the limit of my computer knowledge, save to say I believe the Bios holds the licence key for Windows 10. It has Windows 10 on board and to say I hate the feel of the operating software is an understatement. I just don’t like the tablet look on the desktop, but that is not the PC’s fault.
I generally run OpenSuse13.1 and 13.2 at home, the 13.1 on an older Thin client and 13.2 on a 64 bit old Dell. So I would like to make the Laptop PC have dual boot options, the 1TB hard drive could just be split down the middle, half for Windows and half for Linux.
The laptop seems to come with a 20 G partition on the laptop that on first run and pressing some button on boot up installs Windows 10 so I guess that I need to keep that bit some how incase the PC needs to go back for a fault etc.
Are there any issues I should look out for, any part of the partition I should not touch etc. best to check and get guidance before I stumble blindly into it and I never know someone on here may have the same laptop and already done it.
Any issues with win 10 and boot issues, I will try and download a live boot CD. There is one part of 13.2 I did not like and that was the Snapper, I did find some posts about it once on here and will go off to look, should I keep it all to Ext3 format?
Any clues appreciated as I do not wish to mess up then laptop after a few days and do not consider myself as a knowledgeable user just a user of the software.
Cheers
Adrian
Looking at the Leap42.1 docs it looks like that could be a better bet for installation as it supports UEFI and I get the impression that the machine has this in firmware and is used for Windows 10, still reading the docs to see what it has regards dual booting. It seems at the moment to refer to Windows 8 rather then 10 in the installation docs for Leap.
It is going on to talk about lots of things that I do not understand, so perhaps for the time being I will not proceed with the install on the laptop.
Adrian
Yes, Leap 42.1 is (now) better than 13.x with respect to UEFI support and, the Leap 42.1 kernel supports AMD Dual-Graphics better than 13.x . . .
Simple steps for Dual-Boot on a laptop (single disk):
- Reduce the partition space being used by Windows (10).
- Consider disabling UEFI Secure-Boot.
- Boot a DVD or USB-Stick Leap 42.1 ISO image and install Leap 42.1.
- Re-enable UEFI Secure-Boot (if Leap 42.1 was installed with it disabled).
- Consider setting the BIOS/UEFI clock to use UTC.
Yes, yes, there are several rather long discussions in this forum with respect to Dual-Boot installation with UEFI Secure-Boot enabled:IMHO it’s better to disable UEFI Secure-Boot: the purpose of UEFI Secure-Boot is to prevent unwanted tampering of a disk’s boot area (Root-Kits & Co.).
Therefore, a Dual-Boot system installation must be performed with the UEFI Secure-Boot disabled.
Useful how-to URLs:
Reducing Windows (10) partition space: <http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2015/11/how-to-shrink-windows-10-to-make-space.html>
General Dual-Boot issues:<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dual_boot_with_Windows>
<http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2015/11/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-alongside.html>
Setting-up Windows to use a UTC BIOS/UEFI clock: <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Time#UTC_in_Windows>
Thank you for the reply to this, sorry it has taken me some time to respond, I did not get any message to say you had replied.
I will read up on the articles and see if it makes clearer sense to me what my options are.
Thanks again
Adrian
Well I did it and it works, I can dual boot the Laptop either with Windows 10 or with opensuse Leap 42.1.
Brief summary was I removed what packages I had installed in Windows so I had a basic install, the computer had updated it self over the few days several times.
I then attached an USB drive top it (drive F in my case) and did a system back up to this as a just in case.
Defrag the C drive several times over a few days, and this did make a difference as at the end I could use the Manage options and Windows disk management to shrink the disk so I have roughly half and half for Windows and un allocated disk space.
So I let it shrink the C partition, then I went into Bios and turned on legacy support (see later), made sure the laptop would still shut down and reboot OK in windows 10.
Then with the Opensuse DVD in the drive booted to the disk and started the installation.
I elected to change the proposed partitioning, so I did not use the Btrfs formatting and Snapper. I selected EXT4 for both Boot and home directories. I also selected extended Swap to allow for suspend. and let it install.
I went away for a brew whilst that was going on. When I came back I had Opensuse on the display. Checked that I could shut down and reboot with both Windows operating and once again with Opensuse.
Then for the hell of it I went back into Bios and turned back on UEFI support and once again checked the laptop boots up OK.
I did have one issue when booting into Suse once as the screen lit up and that was about it, but it must have booted suse just no screen as I could shut down correctly.
Powering up has been fine ever since. So I have taken the plunge and up to now, touch wood it is working fine.
Adrian
Be sure to get all the updates Leap has a bunch
Not sure what you did with legacy support. but that is used for the old MBR type booting not legacy and mixing modes can cause problems. One is that the OSs will not see one another and can not chain so you can not use grub to select the OS but must use the EFI boot menu. But it is hard to tell if you installed in legacy or EFI mode. One way to tell is to look in /boot/efi if it exists and be sure both Windows and openSUSE directories are there.
Also, in YaST -->> Bootloader, check that the field related to MBR is empty.
Separate /boot partition on a Dual-Boot Laptop: IMHO not needed; my recommendation is “Linux in only one (Laptop) partition”:
There’s an awful amount of discussion around this issue; I personally tend to ext4 (currently) . . . 
On my AMD Lenovo G505s I had to force Windows to respect the Grub bootloader:
In Windows, open an Elevated Command Prompt and execute this command:
> bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\opensuse\shim.efi
Once again: YaST -->> Bootloader.
Experience has shown, that with Dual-Boot systems, at the 1st Linux boot it pays to execute the YaST Bootloader to re-write the Grub2 files (grub.cfg) and to re-execute mkinitrd.Which people (like me) who have non-English language boot screens still have to do anyway (Bug is still open; not fixed yet) . . .