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ASUS Win8/Linux Dual-boot
furinkan
Member #10,271
October 2008
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So!

A colleague of mine just bought a nice ASUS S550c, which comes with Windows 8. I suggested Linux Mint 14 KDE as a good operating system for her awhile ago, and now that she's had her fill of Win 8... its time to kick it to the curb.

I managed to disable secure boot, and get a live session run. All the basic hardware appears functional. I do have a little confusion though.... The HDDs are set up like so:

sda (1 TB HDD)
- sda1: 300MB fat32 "SYSTEM"
- sda2: .8GB ntfs "Recovery"
- sda3: 128MB
- sda4: 372GB ntfs "OS"
- sda5: 537GB ntfs "DATA"
- sda6: 20GB ntfs "Restore"
sdb (24GB SSD)
- sdb2: 8GB ntfs "IntelRST"
- sdb1: 14GB

ASUS always puts extra partitions on their crap, but this is just freaking ridiculous! 6 partitions!? Does anybody know what the partitions on the SSD are for, and am I right to assume that Restore is window's backup partition and Recovery is more for system rescue?

Also, what kind of KDE apps should I suggest? I'm a GNOME guy, so I have no clue. I just figured KDE would be more Windowsey~

Thanks for any tips!

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
avatar

IntelRST is for hdd caching. It uses it to accelerate access to oft-used files on your hdd.

Not sure what the 14G partition is for, swap file perhaps? Or maybe RST (Rapid Storage Technology) uses both partitions for something. 8G does seem a bit small for a decent cache.

As for the hdd partitions, I'm pretty sure its like this:

- sda1: UEFI System Parition used to boot into the EFI shell and do other things
- sda2: Replacement for Windows recovery disks, contains a miniature copy of windows you can boot into and run restore commands
- sda3: no idea, maybe the classic NT "install/boot" parition that's only used when installing, and forgotten about there-after.
- sda4: fairly obvious
- sda5: ditto
- sda6: this is your windows install "disk". replacement for a physical windows install DVD.

furinkan said:

Also, what kind of KDE apps should I suggest? I'm a GNOME guy, so I have no clue. I just figured KDE would be more Windowsey~

Go with the kde-full install. It'll include pretty much everything, mail apps, kde's office suite, a browser, file manager, image viewer, and maybe possibly some of the extras like the k3b cd/dvd burning tool, kopete for IM, and others.

--
Thomas Fjellstrom - [website] - [email] - [Allegro Wiki] - [Allegro TODO]
"If you can't think of a better solution, don't try to make a better solution." -- weapon_S
"The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don't agree" -- https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/592870205409353730

furinkan
Member #10,271
October 2008
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So this RST. Would this be active in a Linux Boot? Is this some RAID style driver that just accelerates the HDD that way? I'm worried about bulldozing over some new technology (like this) that I know nothing about and killing her Win8. :-/

I know from experience that the DATA partition is superfluous, but I'll double check that. It will probably be the partition that I'll bulldoze for Mint.

EDIT:
Also, I've got the majority of a TB to work with here. She'll probably want access to her music, etc. on both systems. Isn't there a way to mount Docs, Music, Vids, etc to their counterparts on the Windows partition? I may end up doing this for myself. :)

The system has 8GB of RAM, so would I even be able to use the extra 14GB partition as swap? I was pretty sure you had to at least double the ram quantity (at least on windows). ???

I'll install Chrome and Thunderbird for her, since those are familiar. Mint 14 comes with LibreOffice. Is KDE's office suite any better? It comes with Amarok(?) for music, but is there a nice alternative in case she don't like that?

Personally, I find that on Linux I replace half of the end-user apps, and its the ability to do so that makes it such a joy to use. ;D

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
avatar

furinkan said:

I was pretty sure you had to at least double the ram quantity (at least on windows).

That's an old and outdated rule. Anything over like 512MB you just equal, or possibly less. If you have 8GB ram, why would you even need swap in many cases?

Quote:

I know from experience that the DATA partition is superfluous, but I'll double check that. It will probably be the partition that I'll bulldoze for Mint.

It can be nice to separate your data from the OS partition. Then you can let a restore blow away the OS partition, and keep all your data.

--
Thomas Fjellstrom - [website] - [email] - [Allegro Wiki] - [Allegro TODO]
"If you can't think of a better solution, don't try to make a better solution." -- weapon_S
"The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don't agree" -- https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/592870205409353730

furinkan
Member #10,271
October 2008
avatar

That's the sad thing, though. The way ASUS partitioned mine, everything (including user data) was on the OS partition. The DATA partition is just extra.

I'll look at how the partitions are set up, and if at all possible, I'll do as you implied: have a partition for each OS and a gigantic user data partition. It'll be NTFS of course, because M$ can't be peckered to support anything but themselves. ::)

EDIT:

Why would you need > 8GB. Eh, I donno. She don't have a BD Drive, so you are right. There's no good reason.

Thanks, for the tips!

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
avatar

furinkan said:

That's the sad thing, though. The way ASUS partitioned mine, everything (including user data) was on the OS partition. The DATA partition is just extra.

Yeah, It's extra, so you'd put your downloaded stuff and maybe if you work with multimedia files, you'd put them there, etc. Maybe your projects folder and compilers?

Quote:

Why would you need > 8GB. Eh, I donno. She don't have a BD Drive, so you are right. There's no good reason.

Why would that have any bearing on the size of your swap file?

If you mean I meant why would you need more than 8GB ram.. Well my new laptop has 24GB ram :D so clearly I didn't mean ram ;)

--
Thomas Fjellstrom - [website] - [email] - [Allegro Wiki] - [Allegro TODO]
"If you can't think of a better solution, don't try to make a better solution." -- weapon_S
"The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don't agree" -- https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/592870205409353730

furinkan
Member #10,271
October 2008
avatar

Oh, right. It wouldn't. :-X I was thinking of mounting and editing an iso, which you do need to have a huge swap for that.

Well aren't you just a badass. 8-)

Mine has 4 GB, and I really don't push it hard enough to use it all. I'm obviously just not coding hard enough. :'(

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
avatar

furinkan said:

Oh, right. It wouldn't. I was thinking of mounting and editing an iso, which you do need to have a huge swap for that.

You shouldn't :P on linux the iso isn't loaded into memory. I assume it's the same with windows virtual cdrom programs.

--
Thomas Fjellstrom - [website] - [email] - [Allegro Wiki] - [Allegro TODO]
"If you can't think of a better solution, don't try to make a better solution." -- weapon_S
"The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don't agree" -- https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/592870205409353730

furinkan
Member #10,271
October 2008
avatar

Keep in mind: that thought came from a book that was printed a good 6 years ago. I'm sure its no more valid than my assumption that you should have 2x your ram size for swap. :P

As you can tell, I'm very up to date with current computing trends. ::)

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
avatar

furinkan said:

As you can tell, I'm very up to date with current computing trends.

Heh. It happens to everyone ;)

--
Thomas Fjellstrom - [website] - [email] - [Allegro Wiki] - [Allegro TODO]
"If you can't think of a better solution, don't try to make a better solution." -- weapon_S
"The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don't agree" -- https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/592870205409353730

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