Wife orders new PC with no OS ... possible openSUSE candidate

English Open Chat
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My wife decided she wants a new desktop PC , and so earlier today she ordered one over the internet.

Her OLD desktop PC that she is replacing is a 32-bit AMD Sempon-2600 w/1GB (Epox EP-8K7A motherboard) w/AGP ATI RV280 (Radeon-9200Pro) graphics [age-4+ years]. It works well, but my wife wants something faster. We will likely remove the atheros wireless card (a DLink) from that old PC and also remove the extra 300GB hard drive from this old PC, and then give the PC away as a gift to our maid. The wireless card and hard drive may go in my wife’s new PC (TBC).

The new PC she ordered looks pretty neat:

  • Motherboard: Asus P7H55-M, H55
  • CPU: Core i7-860, 4 x 2.8GHz
  • 6 GB RAM (DDR3-1333)
  • Graphic card: GeForce G 210, 512MB RAM
  • 500 GB SATA II 7200rpm (16MB cache) hard drive
  • DVD burner
  • Powersupply - 550 watts

She wanted a cheaper PC (with some obscure motherboard) but the Asus was only a few Euro’s more, and I found users noting this Asus motherboard worked for them in Ubuntu, so I had her upgrade to the Asus P7H55-M, H55. The same for the graphics, she had originally looked at a Core i5 and was considering an Intel GMA500, which is a nice chipset but its Linux support is poor compared to what MS-Windoze users get, … and then she considered an ATI Radeon 5450 (also a nice card under MS-Windows but no HD support under Linux), so I manged to talk her into going for a Core i7 with the nVidia GeForce G210 (and not pay much more). My research suggests the G210 should work with the “nv”, “nouveau” and proprietary “nvidia” graphic drivers. The G210 may not be as capable as the Intel GMA500 nor the ATI Radeon 5450, but it is more compatible with Linux.

The PC has no operating system and I anticipate it will come with a blank unformatted hard drive.

My wife noted the PC should arrive in a week or two.

My wife is now thinking she will carve up the hard drive like this:

  • sda1 - 150 GB NTFS data partition (eventually she may installWin7 or WinXP here)
  • sda2 - 150 GB NTFS data partition (this will always be for data)
  • sda3 - 200 GB extended
  • sda4 - 2 GB swap
  • sda5 - 25 GB " / " (for openSUSE-11.3)
  • sda6 - 170 GB (approx) /home (for openSUSE-11.3)
    She noted she is also thinking of installing 32-bit winXP in Virtual Box under 64-bit openSUSE-11.3 in the 170 GB /home. She is planning on allocating the Virtual Box client/virtual winXP about 2.5 GB of the PC’s 6GB RAM, and probably give it the capability to expand to about 1/2 of the 170GB partition.

But the fact she is even considering putting openSUSE-11.3 on first, is interesting (and encouraging) to me.

Since she plans to put MS windows on later , I need to brush up on my openSUSE MBR restoration techniques, as this (Linux installed first) is not the nominal way to setup a new PC.

It should be interesting.

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You’ll probably be very qualified to write a Wiki article on How to convert a family member to Linux when you’re finished. :good:

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The news about the new PC sounds good to me and the new CPU: Core i7-860, 4 x 2.8GHz is the best part that I can see. I have only a couple of comments. If you think you want Windows, I would go for Win7 and install it first and then decide on the rest of the setup. Otherwise, I would go VM and WinXP if you still have a good copy.

You would be hard pressed to install a normal Windows copy after the fact (after loading openSUSE) and it seems that Win7 will create two partitions, one small booting and a larger for Windows. I don’t agree with having more than one NTFS partition. Let it be Windows or Not, but have two of the same type on the same drive does not make sense to me. I would consider loading a standard MBR and putting the grub loader into the extended partition drive holder. It appears you can do this and not mess up the logical drives within. As for the main openSUSE partition, I suggest it be 40 GB and then the rest into /home. The Extended partition should be last in my estimation. That would look like this:

MBR - Generic Booting Code
sda1 100 MB System, (Active when installed), Primary
sda2 299.9 GB Windows,Primary
sda3 2 GB Primary,SWAP
sda4 200 GB Primary, (Active after you install openSUSE), Grub Loaded, Extended Partition
sda5 40 GB Logical Drive, / openSUSE partition
sda6 160 GB Logical Drive, /home Partition

One thing is for sure, with all of the experts around here, it may be hard to get a consensus on what to do but I am sure you will make it work just super fine.

Thank You,

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This is what I need to research …

  • how many partions does win7 need ? *] and how difficult is it to install win7 AFTER Linux has been installed ? *]how difficult is it to recovery Linux AFTER windows7 has been installed (wiping grub)
    My wife just mentioned to me she wants to put openSUSE on first, and she is firm that she does NOT want to purchase win7 until around Christmas.

The idea for the 2 NTFS drives is my wifes. Her logic - she figures she will mistakenly trash win7 and have to re-install it, so she wants to have a second NTFS partition to put her Windoze data that is not lost when she re-installs win7.

Re-installing openSUSE is easy and so as long as we keep the /home in place, losing openSUSE Linux boot when win7 installed may not be too painful (as long as we keep the /home with the Virtual Box containing winXP).

… I’m also hoping we can plug in her used 300GB hard drive into this PC (giving her a 500 GB sda and a 300 GB sdb) and maybe then she will come up with the idea NOT to have two NTFS partitions on the sda drive.

But Ken Yap has it right on the money when he notes it all has to be her idea. If I suggest anything, then she will do the opposite (unless she thinks I am ‘playing her’ and then she will try and out guess me). So its best to just go with the flow and try not to interfer too much, … which is definitely NOT easy for me. :slight_smile:

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  • how many partions does win7 need ?
  • and how difficult is it to install win7 AFTER Linux has been installed ?
  • how difficult is it to recovery Linux AFTER windows7 has been installed (wiping grub)

Win7 creates two partitions by default. If you upgrade Vista or something, it will not do that. The real issue is to convince Windows 7 to install at all when a non-standard (ie read Linux) installation exists, even when the start of the disk is blank or NTFS. As long as the first partition is a Windows load of some sort and marked active and the MBR is normal, it might load, but it is the chicken or the egg. How do you get that first copy of Windows there unless you did it first.

You can try to hide partitions, I think you can do that with Gparted as I remember, but anything you can hide can be found. Anyway, if you load openSUSE first, you got to ask if you will want to reload openSUSE again, after you are unable to install a copy of Windows you just purchased. So, you surely can decide to go the VM way, but if you want the real thing, go for it now or accept the reload of openSUSE later. Of course, reloading openSUSE is no disaster at all. In fact, it is a second chance to get everything just the way you want. But personnel data can be a hassle to recover or copy around making way for Windows later.

Thank You,

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My Gigabyte motherboards give me the option of what hard drive I want to boot from. Using one drive for Windows 7 and one for openSUSE 11.3 might be a better way to go. If this is possible with your ASUS motherboard then each boot loader only worries about the drive it’s concerned with.

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You know FlameBait, you could be brilliant and you don’t even know it. oldcpu said they had an extra 300GB hard drive they would be saving. While I don’t know the condition or age of this drive, the new PC BIOS would allow you to select the drive you want to boot from. You could load openSUSE there now or Windows 7 there later and select the boot drive from your BIOS. Even later, it is no problem to boot a second drive with Windows from the first drive with the openSUSE grub menu and it works just fine.

Thank You,

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i was just very surprised that win 7 and ofice 2010 took up 35 gigs of the 40 gig partition i set up on my dads computer ( the rest is for data )
just those two and a fresh install .

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Apologies, but I confess I am rather stubbornly reluctant to accept 100% the veracity of this, given what I discovered when surfing. I appreciate tremendously your caution, but I want to be certain, and so my most sincere apologies if I double check your excellent recommendation/cautions. Please don’t be upset at my questions and double checking, but if there is a 1% exception to your caution, where that exception lets me keep Linux when installing Windows 7, then I want to explore that option.

First, my wife has decided she WILL install Linux first and will NOT purchase Windows7 for another month or two. I do NOT want to push her to change her view on that, as she could then change her mind and decide not to install Linux at all.

So its a given, Linux WILL be installed first.

Next, she also wants to install WinXP in a Virtual Boxsession on Linux. After installing that Virtual WinXP session she does NOT want to lose Linux as that will lose the WinXP Virtual Box session (as she will spend dozens of hours tuning winXP in Virtual Box).

I prefer NOT to have to put that Virtual Box session in an exotic location to hide it from Win7 (although that Virtual Session backup ‘may’ be my only alternative).

Hence if at all possible, I want to install Windows7 AFTER openSUSE is installed, and I do NOT want to lose openSUSE.

I note Ubuntu users who claim they installed win7 AFTER installing Ubuntu and it worked: “How to” Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 (Ubuntu installed first)](“How to” Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 (Ubuntu installed first)) … Plus there are guides for restoring Ubuntu’s boot manager (for legacy grub) after installing Windows7: Restore legacy grub after Win7 install

I can’t believe Windows7 would treat Ubuntu different from openSUSE, hence it makes me think this IS possible.

Now while many Ubuntu user’s on the “How to” Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 (Ubuntu installed first) thread](“How to” Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 (Ubuntu installed first)) had problems, when I study their posts I see they made mistakes in their install, or they made mistakes in their restoration of grub.

Why would I be unable to install Windows7 ? Why can’t I simply point it to an NTFS partition and tell it to install ? (but not touch the Linux partition).

True, except its a pain to recover (from backup) a massive 40GB to 50GB image file of winXP in a Virtual Box session (as the wife does NOT want to delete the WinXP Virtual Session when win7 is installed).

As for a 2nd chance to tune openSUSE, ‘just the way I want’, that may be true for a beginner, but not for an average user like me. I have done so much testing of alpha, beta, milestone releases of openSUSE, and using SuSE-Pro since 7.3 and openSUSE since 10.0 that there is really no need for me to re-install openSUSE to get things ‘just the way I want’ . I’m sure you are the same. I’ve done countless installs of different versions of openSUSE, so many times, I can almost do it in my sleep.

Exactly, and the WinXP Virtual Box session will likely be the hassle here that I do not want to have to restore from backup (although that may be my only alternative).

I’ve also been looking here, but they have no example of installing Win7 when Linux already installed: The definitive dual-booting guide: Windows 7, Linux, Vista and XP step-by-step … although how different is the keeping of WinXP (when installing win7) from the keeping of Linux (when installing win7) other than boot manager considerations?

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I don’t know about installing W7 but you needn’t worry that it will find the XP inside a VBox image. VBox installs live inside files on the host’s filesystem, and it’s extremely unlikely that W7 will mount the Linux filesystem and then look for an XP install on it.

So your problem boils down to installing W7 after Linux. If you were intending to transfer files out of XP to W7, then that’s another problem but quite solvable. With a flash memory stick, for example.

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Here is another example: Installing Windows 7 alongside XP and Ubuntu « Chris Matchett in this case the user had both Linux and WinXP, and they installed Win7 (beta) as a 3rd OS. Granted they had to restore the MBR afterward …

… so I’m puzzling over this, as I suspect the user (in this new post I quoted) left out a lot of details …

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My only concern re: winXP is having the entire Linux partition (containing the winXP virtual session) wiped by win7. Of course a backup ensures protection against that, but having to restore 40 GB to 50 GB from backup does take some time (plus repointing Virtual Box after restoring from backup).

A minor frustration in reading up on win7 installs, is the term “drive” is often used interchangeably with the term “partition” when in fact they are not the same. So when they say win7 wipes the entire ‘drive’, what they really mean to say in many cases is win7 wipes the entire selected ‘partition’.

Here is another interesting point on win7 : Ubuntu Forums - View Single Post - Windows unallocated nearest partition where it notes:

for windows 7 if you dont first preformat the space to ntfs, you plan to use if you dont it unallocates your nearest partition.

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Use of the second 300GB drive (which is about 3 years old) is a viable option to work around some of the complexity. I need to check to see if this drive is SATA or IDE, as sometimes Linux struggles with having both SATA and IDE on the same PC (SATA controller chipset dependant).

Of course, even IF I earmark the 300 GB drive as an option to solve win7 problems, I’m not “calling the shots” here, but my wife is :frowning: , and she may have other designs/plans for this 300 GB drive.

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Yes, but it’s got nothing to do with XP, that’s just W7 menacing Linux.

There’s no need to repoint anything. XP lives totally within the VBox file in Linux. Restoring Linux restores XP. That is, assuming you didn’t assign XP a real partition but a virtual disk that is actually a Linux file, which is the default.

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Me too, … BUT my wife figures she will be re-installing win7 multiple times (based on her winXP experience) and so she wants a separate NTFS for data that will not be touched by ‘clean’ win7 re-installs.

Assuming the 300GB 2nd drive can’t be used, then after pondering this some more, I am thinking of recommending the following configuration to my wife, BEFORE win7 gets installed:

MBR - Generic Booting Code
sda1 - 150 GB NTFS primary - blank but formatted as NTFS
sda3 - 2 GB primary - swap
sda4 - 348 GB Primary, active after install openSUSE, Grub loaded, Extended partition
sda5 - 150 GB Logical Drive - NTFS partition
sda6 - 25 GB Logical Drive - / openSUSE partition
sda7 - 173 GB Logical Drive - /home openSUSE partition

And then when installing win7, point it to the sda1 which hopefully it will carve up into two separate partitions.

I’m also tempted to NOT put the swap as a primary, but rather move it to the extended area, which would mean instead:

MBR - Generic Booting Code
sda1 - 150 GB NTFS primary - blank but formatted as NTFS
sda4 - 350 GB Primary, active after install openSUSE, Grub loaded, Extended partition
sda5 - 2 GB extended - swap
sda6 - 150 GB Logical Drive - NTFS partition
sda7 - 25 GB Logical Drive - / openSUSE partition
sda8 - 173 GB Logical Drive - /home openSUSE partition

I need to surf to see if there are performance hits when having swap on extended. Given her PC is to have 6GB of RAM, I suspect it does not matter where the swap is located (but I don’t know for certain).

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Yes, agree.

Thats the plan. … Yes, if Linux is wiped, I could simply copy (from backup) the restored Virtual Image of WinXP to the location where any re-installed openSUSE keeps its Virtual images (for Virtual Box).

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Putting swap on an extended partition shouldn’t have any overhead. All the swapper cares about is a range of blocks it can use, which the logical partition certainly will be.

In fact in Linux you can even use a swap file instead of a swap partition with very little effect on performance.

And given that you will have heaps of memory, swap will hardly ever be needed.

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@oldcpu → I love the fact that your wife knows exactly what she wants for her setup, and she is getting a pretty sweet rig right there… good luck with getting it setup properly (I am also one of the Windows first, Linux second type people for a dual boot, and in my experience with Windows 7 if you are careful re-installs are not that common)…

Regards
Neil

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My wife had to go to work this weekend, so I jumped on her old PC (that she will be giving away), booted to openSUSE-11.3, and ran the following to get some more information:

df -Th
/sbin/lspci -nnk
hwinfo > hwinfo.txt

and checked out hwinfo.txt with a text editor.

1st note, … her primary drive in her old PC is an 80GB IDE drive (Western Digital Caviar IDE) that will stay in the old PC. It is the Primary IDE master in her old PC.

2nd note, … She has no extra ‘300 GB’ drive, but rather her second drive is in fact a ‘500 GB’ drive (and not 300 GB) and it is the primary IDE slave drive in her old PC. This second drive is also an IDE drive (Ultra ATA/100 interface - more precisely, the second drive is a Baracuda 7200-10 Ultra ATA/100 500GB - ST3500630A).

So there is a risk openSUSE may struggle with having both a SATA and an IDE drive in same PC. And there is also a risk that win7 may struggle with having both a SATA and an IDE drive in same PC. So even though having a spare 500GB drive is nice, it may not be practical to put this drive in her new PC.

I’ll have to ‘play this by ear’ and not count on this being usable in my planning (although it may work).

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You can buy SATA to IDE converters. But it may not be worth the trouble, disks are so cheap now.

In fact, why not plan to install W7 and Linux on separate disks, that may save you lots of hassle for a small expense.