Dual booting Windows 7 and Xubuntu 12.10 64-bit

Assalamualaikum, Hi,

Xubuntu desktop

Since TF2 on Steam fully supported on Linux, I hardly switched my dual-boot machine to Windows OS. So most of my writing here mostly will be Linux specific. However feel free to ask me through comment if you want me to help you up to Google specific guide for your platform.

For now, I'm on Archlinux. However, I'd like to try out another distro so I'd like to write up my Debian Xubuntu addition (actually replacing my Arch) to my existing dual-boot Win+Arch system.

How to setup Xubuntu

1- Get the installation image for Debian Xubuntu 12.10 64bit from http://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/

2- Write the installation image to a USB

haziq@arch>sudo dd if=xubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M; sync; eject /dev/sdc

Since I wanted to test whether my Asus USB-N53 wireless adapter is supported or not, I boot up the Xubuntu first an make the installation from the Live session.

Just follow every instruction on the screen, most of them are common setting and should give you no trouble as long as you setup your language setting correctly.

3- Doing the partitioning by CLI
Even though there is graphical partition allocator in Xubuntu installer, it's limited only for simple setup. So in order to keep my Windows installation while using LVM, I had to use the command line interface (terminal).

Create physical volume

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo pvcreate /dev/sdb

Create volume group

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo vgcreate vg00 /dev/sdb5

Create logical volumes

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo lvcreate -n lvroot -L 30g vg00

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo lvcreate -n lvswap -L 4g vg00

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo lvcreate -n lvhome -l 100%FREE vg00

Show the list of logical volumes created

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo lvdisplay 

My output:

--- Logical volume ---
LV Path                /dev/vg00/lvroot
LV Name                lvroot
VG Name                vg00
LV UUID                cMPMW2-41Z2-HR66-GoTA-Zse5-JHbP-mDf68V
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Creation host, time xubuntu, 2013-03-15 23:22:58 +0000
LV Status              available
# open                 0
LV Size                30.00 GiB
Current LE             7680
Segments               1
Allocation             inherit
Read ahead sectors     auto
- currently set to     256
Block device           252:0

--- Logical volume ---
LV Path                /dev/vg00/lvswap
LV Name                lvswap
VG Name                vg00
LV UUID                reLBEn-JW8t-wpTU-ZQIP-XxKm-X1Oe-2w6dSF
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Creation host, time xubuntu, 2013-03-15 23:23:06 +0000
LV Status              available
# open                 0
LV Size                4.00 GiB
Current LE             1024
Segments               1
Allocation             inherit
Read ahead sectors     auto
- currently set to     256
Block device           252:1

--- Logical volume ---
LV Path                /dev/vg00/lvhome
LV Name                lvhome
VG Name                vg00
LV UUID                zZDy2y-YrNE-o223-M0Y6-lYb7-pb49-kn0JNP
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Creation host, time xubuntu, 2013-03-15 23:26:46 +0000
LV Status              available
# open                 0
LV Size                281.76 GiB
Current LE             72130
Segments               1
Allocation             inherit
Read ahead sectors     auto
- currently set to     256
Block device           252:2

4- Installing Steam client
If you install from Ubuntu Software Center, even though Steam client is listed as free, you're required to click a 'Buy' button and you're required to sign in with your Ubuntu account. So if you don't have one, you need to create one.

5- Installing NVIDIA proprietary driver
For my GeForce GTX 670, at first, the installation for nvidia-current seems going smoothly, however I realized there's a problem with the driver installation when I tried to play the TF2 where it can't go to full screen.

TF2 only displayed in small screen and
the monitor setting is incorrect in nvidia-xconfig

In the end, I went back to Terminal land, and try to edit the xorg.conf after I've found out nvidia-setting doesn't offer any option that might solve the problem. Shockingly I've found out that xorg.conf didn't existed in /etc/X11/.

So I generate one using

haziq@haziq-desktop:~$sudo nvidia-xconfig

Restart the X, gave TF2 another shot.. and voila!

6- Sit back, and enjoy your new OS.


References:

Boot from USB
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/USB_Installation_Media#Overwrite_the_USB_drive

LVM howtos
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lvm

How to specify rest of volume size?
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/lvcreate-with-max-size-available-749253/

Ext3 or Ext4?
https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Installation_Guide/s2-diskpartrecommend-x86.html

Wallpaper
http://imgur.com/SyunqWh

Generate xorg.conf for NVIDIA
http://askubuntu.com/questions/217758/how-to-make-an-xorg-conf-file