Install Linux On Windows 7

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Linux is often best installed in a dual-boot system. This allows you to run Linux on your actual hardware, but you can always reboot into Windows if you need to run Windows software or play PC games.

Setting up a Linux dual-boot system is fairly simple, and the principles are the same for every Linux distribution. Dual-booting Linux on a Mac or a Chromebook is a different process.

The Basics

Here’s the basic process you’ll need to follow:

  • Install Windows First: If you already have Windows installed, that’s fine. If not, be sure to install Windows first, before you install the Linux system. If you install Linux second, it can set up its boot loader properly to happily co-exist with Windows. if you install Windows second, it will ignore Linux, and you’ll have to go through some trouble to get your Linux boot loader working again.
  • Make Room for Linux: You’ll need free space on your Windows system drive to install Linux, or possibly a second entirely different hard drive if you have a desktop PC. You’ll usually need to resize your Windows partition to make room for Linux. If you’re installing Windows from scratch, be sure to leave some free space on the drive for Linux. This will save you some time later.
  • Install Linux Second: Choose your Linux distribution and put its installer on a USB drive or DVD. Boot from that drive and install it on your system, making sure you select the option that installs it alongside Windows — don’t tell it to wipe your hard drive. It’ll automatically set up a Grub2 boot loader menu that lets you choose your preferred operating system each time you boot your computer.

Although the broad outlines are simple, this can be complicated by a number of issues including UEFI Secure Boot requirements on Windows 8 PCs and disk encryption.

Install Windows First

Your PC probably already has Windows installed on it, and that’s fine. If you’re setting up a PC from scratch, be sure to select the “Custom install” option and tell Windows to use only part of the hard drive, leaving some unallocated space left over for Linux. This will save you the trouble of resizing the partition later.

Make Room For Linux

You’ll probably want to resize your Windows system partition to make room for Linux. If you already have some unallocated space or a separate hard drive for Linux, that’s perfect. Otherwise, it’s time to resize that existing Windows partition so you can make space for a new Linux partition.

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You can do this in several ways. Most Linux installers allow you to resize Windows NTFS partitions, so you can do this during the installation process. However, you may just want to shrink your Windows system partition from within Windows itself to avoid any potential problems.

To do so, open the Disk Management utility — press Windows Key + R, type diskmgmt.msc into the Run dialog, and press Enter. Right-click the Windows system partition — that’s likely your C: drive — and select “Shrink Volume.” Shrink it to free up space for your new Linux system.

If you’re using BitLocker encryption on Windows, you won’t be abne to resize the partition. Instead, you’ll need to open the Control Panel, access the BitLOcker settings page, and click the “Suspend protection” link to the right of the encrypted partition you want to resize. You can then resize it normally, and BitLocker will be re-enabled on the partition after you reboot your computer.

Install Linux Second

RELATED:How to Boot and Install Linux on a UEFI PC With Secure Boot

Next, make installation media for your Linux system. You can download an ISO file and burn it to a disk or create a bootable USB drive. Reboot your computer and it should automatically boot from the Linux installation media you’ve inserted. If not, you’ll need to change its boot order or use the UEFI boot menu to boot from a device.

On some newer PCs, your PC may refuse to boot from the Linux installation media because Secure Boot is enabled. Many Linux distributions will now boot normally on Secure Boot systems, but not all of them. You may need to disable Secure Boot before installing Linux.

Go through the installer until you reach an option that asks where (or how) you want to install the Linux distribution. This will look different depending on your Linux distribution, but you want to choose the option that lets you install Linux alongside Windows, or choose a manual partitioning option and create your own partitions. Don’t tell the installer to take over an entire hard drive or replace Windows, as that’ll wipe away your existing Windows system.

Choosing an Operating System and Customize Grub2

RELATED:How to Configure the GRUB2 Boot Loader’s Settings

Once you’ve installed Linux, it will install the Grub2 boot loader to your system. Whenever you boot your computer, Grub2 will load first, allowing you to choose which operating system you want to boot — Windows or Linux.

You can customize Grub’s options, including which operating system is the default and how long Grub2 waits until it automatically boots that default operating system. Most Linux distributions don’t offer easy Grub2 configuration applications, so you may need to configure the Grub2 boot loader by editing its configuration files.

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You can use this process to triple or quadruple-boot multiple versions of Linux along with Windows, multiple versions of Windows along with Linux, or multiple versions of each. Just install one after the other, ensuring there’s enough room for a separate partition for each operating system. Be sure to install Windows before you install Linux, too.

Image Credit: Paul Schultz on Flickr

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Brief: This guide shows you how to dual boot Linux Mint with Windows 10 and enjoy both Linux and Windows together in one system.

So you have decided to switch to Linux. Good decision! And if you chose to use Linux Mint, that’s even a better decision.

Linux Mint is one of the best Linux distributions for beginners. Using Linux Mint is fairly easy and installing Linux Mint is no rocket science either. In this tutorial, we’ll see how to install Linux Mint along side Windows 10.

Before that let me recap you a few things about installing Linux Mint. There are a few ways you can start using any Linux based operating system.

  • Use Linux inside Windows in a virtual machine: This runs a Linux OS like any other application within Windows. This is also one of the safest ways to get a feel of Linux. However, this will utilize your system resources and if you have less than 4Gb of RAM, I won’t advise using it extensively.
  • Use a live version of Linux: In this method, you put Linux on a USB or DVD and you boot from it. This is usually slow and your changes done to the Linux system are (normally) not saved. This is particularly useful if you just want to see what Linux feels like.
  • Remove WIndows and Linux: If you have backed up your data and have a recovery or installation disk of Windows ready with you or if you are determined that you are not going back to Windows, you can remove Windows completely and use only Linux.
  • Install Linux alongside Windows: This method is called dual booting Linux with Windows. Here, you install Linux on a system that already has Windows. And when your system powers up, you can choose if you want to use Windows or Linux. This involves touching the disk partition and sometimes boot order. Absolute beginners often find it complicated but this is the best way to use Linux and Windows together in one system. And in this article, we’ll see how to dual boot Linux Mint with Windows 10.

Will dual booting Linux with Windows slow down your system?

I was asked this question several times in the Linux Users Group. So, the short answer is no. Dual booting Linux and Windows won’t slow your system in any way.

The only delay is in boot time that too because you get 10 seconds of buffer time to select between Linux and Windows. Once you have booted into either of Linux or Windows, it will work the same as if it is the only OS in the system. No impact on the usability of your system. Dual boot won’t slow down your system.

Install Linux Mint in dual boot with Windows:

Before we proceed to see the procedure to dual boot Linux Mint with Windows, let me give you some optional yet recommended safety instructions:

  • Back up your data: You are going to touch disk partitions. Normally, it’s not a big issue but just in case if you touched wrong partition etc, you may lose data. So my advice is to back up your important files, documents, music, movies etc to an external disk or cloud, whichever suits you.
  • Have a boot repair disk: If your boot gets messed up, you can try to repair it with boot repair disk. If you have an extra USB or CD, you can use that to create boot repair disk.
  • Have a live or recovery disk of Windows ready: If your boot gets messed up and despite all efforts, you ended with an unbootable system, you can use the Windows disk to reinstall Windows.

I am not discouraging you. I am asking you to be prepared for the worst case scenario.

Remember that this article applies to computers that have Windows 10 already installed on the system. You are installing Linux Mint on an already installed Windows system, not the other way round.

I have created a detailed video tutorial on installing Linux Mint alongside Windows 10. You can refer to it if you want to see all the steps in even more details. I also advise you to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Linux tutorials.

Follow the steps below to install Linux Mint in dual boot with Windows:

Step 1: Create a live USB or disk

Go to Linux Mint website and download ISO file. This ISO file is the disk image that you can burn to a USB or DVD.

Once you have downloaded the Linux Mint ISO, you need a tool to write the image to a disk. I recommend using a free tool called Universal USB Installer in Windows:

It’s an executable exe file. Just double click on it to run the software and browse it to the ISO. Make sure that you have your USB key plugged in:

If you need more hints, here is a screenshot tutorial on how to create a live USB for Linux.

Install Linux On Windows 7 Computer

Step 2: Make a new partition for Linux Mint

This is where you have to be cautious. If you have multiple partitions (not the recovery ones), you can either use one of them or create a new partition from an existing partition. Your existing data will be safe if you have enough free space. Typically, you install Linux in under 10 Gb, however, if disk space if not a concern, I advise using 30-40Gb at least. This way you can have more space at your disposal for downloading and keeping various files.

In Windows 10, go to start menu and type ‘partition’. This will bring up Disk Management utility. Now carefully select the disk in which you’ll make some free space by shrinking the volume:

In my case, I only had the C Drive with 223Gb of space on it. So I shrunk it to make 110Gb of free partition on it. I recommend watch the video to see the exact steps you need more hint.

Step 3: Boot in to live USB

Plug the live USB or disk into the computer and restart the computer. While booting the computer press F10 or F12 function key (defers from computer to computer) to go to the boot menu. Now, choose the option to boot from USB or Removable Media.

Important Note: If your computer came with Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 and you upgraded your system to Windows 10, you may have to disable secure boot. Most modern system with Windows 10 should not need this step, especially with Linux Mint or Ubuntu.

Step 4: Start the installation

It takes some time to boot from the live USB or disk. Have some patience. Once it boots in to live disk, you鈥檒l be provided to Try Linux Mint or Install Linux Mint. Even if you choose to try it, you can find the install option on the desktop:

In next few screens, you鈥檒l be asked to choose the language of the operating system. It will then do some checks on available space, battery and Internet connection.

Step 5: Prepare the partition

This is the most important part of the whole installation. Where to install Linux Mint? As mentioned before, I prefer separate partitions for Windows and Linux. Windows is already installed here, we’ll prepare a new partition for Linux Mint. In the Installation Type window, choose Something Else:

Step 6: Create root, swap and home

Since you already created a new partition in Windows, it’s time to install Linux Mint on it. Now, there are several ways to do it. But here, I’ll show you my favorite way and that is to have a Root, a Swap and a Home.

Create a root partition first. Choose the free space available and click on +.

Here, choose the size of the root (10 GB is enough but I chose to have 20 here), choose ext4 file system, and mount point as / (i.e. root):

Now, next is to create the swap partition. Now the question is what should be the swap size for Linux Mint installation?

The answer depends upon your RAM size, your needs, available disk space and whether you would use hibernation or not. You can use the below suggestion:

  • RAM less than 2 GB: Swap should be double the size of RAM
  • RAM between 2 to 4 GB: Swap should be RAM size + 2 GB
  • RAM between 6 GB to 8 GB: Swap should be size of RAM
  • RAM more than 8 GB: Swap should be half the size of RAM or less

Don’t spend too much time thinking about swap. It is helpful for systems with less memory. For system with more than 8 GB of RAM and SSD, the less the swap, the better it is.

Install Linux On Windows 7

The next step is to create Home. Try to allocate the maximum size to Home because this is where you鈥檒l be downloading and keeping the files.

Chitra tamil melody cut songs. Once you have created Root, Swap and Home partitions, click on Install Now button.

Step 7: Follow the trivial instructions

Technically, you have crossed the main hurdle if you reached this point successfully. Now you will be taken through a number of screens to select options like keyboard layout, login credentials etc. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out what to do here afterward. I have attached screenshots for reference purpose here.

Once the installation is over, you will be presented with the option to keep trying live version or to restart the system.

And that would be it. On next boot, you will see the option of Linux Mint on the grub screen. And thus you can enjoy the beautiful and beginner-friendly Linux distribution. I hope you found this guide to Linux Mint dual boot with Windows helpful.

Here are a few common troubleshoot you might have to do after dual booting Linux Mint:

I strongly advise you to read things to do after installing Linux Mint so that you can have a good start.

If you want to remove, you can follow this guide to uninstall Linux Mint from Windows 8 dual boot.

If you have questions, suggestions or a word of thanks, feel free to drop a comment. Stay tuned for more Linux Mint tutorials. Ciao :)

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