Really do like kubunto 15 with the kde plasma 5 desktop. Can i install it on a different drive i don't want to overwrite windows, sorry if i sound like a total noob, im not but i am compared to you guys!
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I would install linux on another drive. It just makes life so much simpler. :)
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Yup but can i boot into it all the time without having to go through bios? i have never ran two Operating systems before so im not sure how this works.
You can update the linux bootloader (typically GRUB) to give you the option between the two when you boot.
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You can set it up to be your primary boot drive ?
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Yeah i can? Do i have to install it on a totally different ssd or can i primary boot into a partition
EDIT: by partition i mean a partition made to install linux on.
I think partitioning is a waste of time and more hassle than it is worth when it comes to windows and linux playing nice together.
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here would be my recommendation, if you need me to elaborate on any of these let me know.
if you have a extra drive laying around and have room on your pc for one you could install linux on that. i would unplug your windows drive just to be safe, install windows then plug the windows drive back in. then just set the boot order you want in your bios. if you wanted to boot to the non-default drive you could just go boot off of it via the boot menu,
if you are on a laptop or only have one drive you can shrink your partition in windows provided you have the free space, you can then create a separate partition on the same drive to install linux on, this will probably install grub on the drive and mess with your boot order so you may have to modify grub to change the boot order. its not that hard but it can be scary the first time you do it, this is the most risky of my solutions and if you proceed with it be careful as you can accidentally erase windows if you are not paying attention.
if you want to try linux to see if you like it, remember that you can always do a live usb boot or cd. look up "universal usb installer" it will burn an ISO to a flash drive and you can boot off of it in a live environment to try linux.
linux is pretty easy to learn about as there is sooo much documentation. if you do the partition shrink and install on the same drive please do your research before hand. i would even go as far as to recommend running clonezilla and saving an image of your drive just to be safe. if you want to know what that is look it up on the google. good luck!
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I have a win7/linux setup using two drives in my system, I recommend doing windows install first then doing linux install on other drive with finally going in bios and setting linux drive as boot as grub boot menu will allow OS selection on startup.
EDIT also to add. If you're using single drive, creating partitions is extremely easy on linux install for dual boot (at least in my experience)
I would suggest to read this article first: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dual_boot_with_Windows as this will eliminate a lot of questions, I believe. Even though it's on Arch wiki, the whole concept remains the same.
And hey, maybe you could play a bit with Kubuntu in a virtual environment (e.g. Oracle VirtualBox or VMWare), mess around with partitioning, installation, grub config and so on, so you get better understanding when it comes to the real setup.
Yes, GRUB, the Linux boot loader, will see all Operating system across drives and add them as boot options.
Is it possible to install to an external hard drive and still have grub see the boot option?
That has been my experience also, in fact just installed openSuse on a laptop the other day for my brother, the laptop had a existing Win 7 install and Suse asked if it could shrink the Windows partition to make room for it's install, I told it yes, and away it went, grub saw the Windows 7 install and added it to the boot menu.
The first boot of Win 7 after the install gave Windows a little hiccup (I assumed because of it's drive space being reconfigured) but after a reboot it was happy once again and both OSs co-exist just fine.
I use two separate SSDs. One for Linux. One for Windows. I power off the PC and swap drives to switch. The wires are outside my case, so I can do this fast and easy.
I've been using bootloaders since the RedHat days with LILO. Works great, but as mentioned, install Windows first - otherwise it tries to clear out that pesky program in your boot area (because the only OS you should be using is Microsoft based of course).
If you're doing single drive, make sure to leave some unformatted space for Linux when installing Windows.
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Yup and if you have to resize the Windows partition try to do it first on Windows.
I am using dual boot with two separate SSDs. One has Kubuntu 15.10 the other Win 7HP. I configured Grub to boot to the last selected OS, so if I select Kubuntu and have to reboot, it will automatically boot on the drive with Linux (Kubuntu). To boot into windows, I select Windows in the Grub menu during the boot delay. I just followed this method.
Welcome to Linux.
Woods