Windows 7 and Windows 8 dual booting then adding Linux

[iharrison30]

First of all I would like to say thank you for allowing me to join the forum. Back in 1999 when I was medically retired from the British Army after sustaining a spinal injury on Operational Tour, I retrained myself in computers. My OS of choice back then was MS Windows, however after Windows XP I moved to OSX.

About two years ago I knew I needed to get back involved with Windows and bought my Lenovo Laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium. I then installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview on a different partition and upgraded to Windows 8 Pro when it became available.

I am now looking to install a distro of Linux and can't seem to find any information of doing so. I don't know which Windows partition it would be best to install it on 7 or 8. Also I understand that Ubuntu have a Windows Installer wubi, but I have heard horror stories after the installation.

My main fear is losing Windows 7 or 8 and if the entire process is too risky I'll just leave it altogether. So I guess my question is has anyone installed a Linux distro on a PC which originally came pre installed with Windows 7 and then added Windows 8 to a partition; if so can you help me out. I apologise if this question offends anyone who may think I should have posted this on a Linux forum, I just thought I would get a more concise answer from the Windows Forums.

thank you all so much for your help and time in advance.

 

[gregrocker]

It would be best to install your Linux distro on another HD with the WIndows OS HD unplugged. You can even run Linux from a boot CD or flash stick.

If you decide you want to try multi-booting it with Windows I'd back up a Win7 backup image of your Windows installations first so you have a path back to where you are now.

I'd also look over this tutorial written by one of our top members here: Dual Boot - Windows 7 and Linux - Windows 7 Forums.

You can discuss this further with the tutorial's author in its comments section or ask him there to chip in to discussion here. You'll get help that like him is Golden.

 

[iharrison30]

Thank you so much for your reply Gregrocker I really appreciate your help on this matter and will of course check out the link you provided. If I get it working I will certainly keep the thread updated. All the best mate

 

[Mark Phelps]

Wubi installs (installing Ubuntu inside Windows) are intended only for short-term use. They generally don't handle version updates well. If you just want to try out Ubuntu and see how it works, using Wubi is an excellent way to do it as you don't have to mess around with partitioning, and you don't risk corrupting Windows stuff as as result.