Originally Posted By: 97tbird
Wonder if I should do dual boot with Ubuntu 12.04 or something (with Win & pro) on my upcoming T520...
It should have enough juice (i7, and will be upgraded to 8 GB RAM) for a good dual boot set up with Ubuntu and Win 7 I think....
It'll have plenty of "juice". An i7 and 8GB RAM is overkill for Ubuntu/Mint. I'm running Mint 12 KDE on a 3.2GHz P4 w/HT, 3GB DDR2 400, and an ancient ATI X300. Ubuntu 11.10 is running fine on a laptop with 2GB RAM and a 2GHz Turion X2 and a low end ATI card. Kubuntu 12.04 is quite snappy on my laptop with a 2GHz Pentium Dual Core, 4GB RAM, and an Intel GMA965. Both the KDE desktops are running with the default eye candy and aren't sluggish in the least.
If you're going to do that (keep Win7) follow these procedures to set up dual boot while keeping the Win7 bootloader "in charge" at boot. The reason for this is that Windows sometimes writes changes to the MBR during updates and GRUB2 can get hosed in the process. What you want to do (and what the guides describe) is:
1) Partitioning scheme (/boot, /root, /home, swap)
2) Installing GRUB2 to the /root partition (to prevent overwrite of the MBR)
3) Using EasyBCD (free for home) to edit the Win 7 boot loader to add an entry for Linux pointing to the root partition where GRUB2 is located.
What you're setting up is a "chainload" where Windows 7 bootloader passes off a command to load GRUB2 and then GRUB loads the Linux distro.
http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2011/06/11/dual-boot-linux-mint-11-and-windows-7/
http://thpc.info/dual/win7/dualboot_win7+ubuntu1110_bcd_on_win7.html
Ignore that the first guide refers to Mint11 and the second to Ubuntu 11.10. Its the same sequence to follow for the newest Ubuntu flavor or Mint.
