hi, not sure it's the right place to post this here, but since the purpose it to test PA on linux and provide additional feeback for specific linux release, thought it makes sense. I'm running PA on : H77 asus motherboard / core i7 3770K 32gigs of Mem GTX 660 TI Win 7 64bits installed on Intel SSD. Additional Adaptec Raid controller with bunch of 4 Sata drives (not aiming to use them with Linux) I'm looking for installing linux as a second OS without breaking current Win7 installation. So here is the main question (I'm used to work on linux). How to make this dual boot (in the easiest and safest way) ? I know this might sound like lazyness but in case someone has allready performed these steps it would help me to move forward on PA linux test, without compromising my current Win7 64bits installation. Thanks again !
While related to PA (as you're trying to get Linux and Win7 working to test the game) this isn't quite the right place to ask these kinds of questions. I'd suggest looking on various Linux forums for this rather than asking here. A simple web search also brings up several links to full tutorials on the topic.
Put in a Ubuntu/XUbuntu CD, boot from it => It will detect win7 and offer to install linux next to it. Very easy to do. I moved this thread to the backers lounge.
If you have free space on the disk just install Linux there. At the end of the installation process Linux installs Grub as bootloader. Grub should recognice each OS installed on the machine. When booting Grub offers you a list of OS to choose from. Thats how I set up all my dual boot systems (Windows + Debian). What distribution do you want to use? If you don't have free disk space (or a partition you can delete) it's more difficult. You can shrink a NTFS partition with "ntfsresize" but I can't really help you with that and it mighte be risky. Hope that helps.
Thanks to both of you. I still have to check which release i want to install. Now my SSD is fully dedicated to Win 7. So I think best option is to use hot pluggable disk dedicated to Linux. This way, no chance to screw up my win7 installation. Is there any distribution you would recommend ?
Sounds like a plan, but there is a problem if you remove that linux disk. The reason: Grub requires some configuration files that are stored in the Linux file system. If you remove the Linux disk, Grub breaks and you won't be able to boot your system. In other words: to remove Linux from your system you will have to reinstall the windows bootloader to boot windows again. You won't be able to (un)plug the linux disk at will. The section "Restore MBR" in this article describes how to renistall the windows bootloader. I hope I didn't scare you with that. If you have any questions, just ask. About recommended distributions: I personally use Debian. It's very stable and has tons of software included. A downside is that, due to the long testing, the software included is a little older. Personally I'm completely fine with that, but it's a matter of preference. Garat mentioned a list of working linux distributions in the alpha forums. You might want to have a look at that.
I would assume that the mainboard of the OP has an UEFI instead of a BIOS, judging from his fairly recent chipset. Modern UEFIs look for and can boot available bootloaders without requiring a designated boot disk or an MBR. My H77-based mainboard even offers me a boot menu where I can pick any loader available on any of the currently connected storage media.
Go for Ubuntu as it's the widest supported Distro. As others have said, it's very easy you can just pop a disk in (you can boot Linux directly from a USB by the way to install and test from).
I've mentioned it already, but it bears repeating. If you are using a second drive to install Linux on, a simple solution is to point your BIOS to it as the first drive. This means that its Master Boot Record will be used to install the bootloader and boot your computer. If you ever decide to remove that hard drive and switch back to the one that has Windows on it as the primary, its own MBR will have been unaffected, meaning that you can boot right to Windows without any issue.
