Dual booting Windows 10 and Fedora 24 Spins KDE Plasma on ACER ASPIRE E15 Start from USB. NEWB guide

ClintonDH

Key Words: USB Boot, Dual Boot, Linux, Fedora 24, Spins, KDE, Plasma, Acer, Aspire, E15, UEFI, Rufus, BIOS

 

I promised I would do this if I got it to work, and, well, it only took 2 weeks (this is my first Linux install). Please note that this is so far the only OS (Windows 10 specifically on my ACER) that I have been able to perform a dual boot on. I am using VirtualBox for Kali on my MAC (and have not yet successfully executed that), nor have I been able to reproduce this on a Toshiba I have running XP that I was hoping to make a dedicated Fedora PC. I will post as I work it out.

 

Its actually easy – and I have not yet needed to use command lines in terminal or research Grub, its just a lot of the resources on the net miss out critical bits that collapse the process. This means that I get into an endless research loop which accelerates frustration. I will miss stuff that’s important to users no doubt – but hopefully I can save you some time on sourcing good resources for all of the rest.

 

From what I can gather Fedora is similar to Ubuntu – so the Ubuntu guides ended up being really helpful across the board, and there is more of them.

 

The Fedora Installation Guides are incredible, but I found I could not commit to reading through all of them so I ended up hardly referencing them.

 

Oh – and UEFI is actually awesome once you get the hang of it.

 

What I did:

 

Linux OS via download from the getfedora or fedoraproject sites was listed as an unstable way of downloading so I downloaded uTorrent and used the ***** directory at getfedora to download the ***** file. I used the Fedora KDE Live x86_64 24 ***** file.

 

https://torrents.fedoraproject.org

 

I wanted to be safe so I checked that the completed ***** was not corrupted by checking off the hashsum by downloading and then I manually checked the two off. I copy and pasted the checksum that came with the ***** download by copy and paste into a notepad document and checking it off against fedorahosted as it shows the checksum:

 

https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

 

uTorrent:

 

http://www.utorrent.com/intl/en/downloads/complete

 

I loaded my 8GB USB and downloaded Rufus. If you have a UEFI Bios like I do, and you are a newb like me use Rufus – don’t use anything else. Rufus is easy and intuitive and there are a ton of images on Google images that verify your options quickly and easily. In short, what you need to do is select the option GPT with UEFI, FAT32 and burn the .ISO from there. Im not quite up to speed on why the disk partitions should be allocated as Rufus suggests but the reason is a very good one – so be safe and go with the recommended. I also tried the numerous GPT etc options. GPT is really important. I figured it out after an IT friend told me by using this guide (its kick ***** good – really in-depth):

http://www.rodsbooks.com/linux-uefi/

 

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725671(v=ws.11).aspx

 

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26193-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-disk.html

 

https://boundlesslinux.blogspot.co.nz/2015/04/how-to-create-gpt-disk-label-in-rhel-or.html

 

Partition your hard-drive. I allocated 40GB and left it Unallocated (in black). Theres a ton of good tutorials on this, and just did related searches on YouTube which installed a lot of confidence. I also found this useful:

 

http://linuxbsdos.com/2014/11/08/a-beginners-guide-to-disks-and-disk-partitions-in-linux/

 

I turned off Fast Boot. I think this step is extremly important and I could not find a reference to it for ages:

http://linux.about.com/od/howtos/ss/How-To-Create-A-UEFI-Bootable-Linux-Mint-USB-Drive.htm#step3

 

To get into my BIOS I clicked the Start button, went to Settings, Recovery, Advanced Settings, Troubleshooting and followed the prompts to get into my BIOS. This helped – Windows 8 or 8.1 is very similar to Windows 10:

 

http://www.geek.com/chips/windows-8-advanced-boot-1532751/

 

http://askubuntu.com/questions/519610/allowing-boot-of-ubuntu-on-a-acer-aspire-v5-531-with-uefi

 

http://acer-au.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/37063

 

This is a great run down on BIOS:

 

http://askubuntu.com/questions/627416/acer-aspire-e15-will-not-dual-boot

 

I will do a step by step of BIOS when I can.

 

Additional resources:

 

Read all of this thread:

http://community.acer.com/t5/2014-Archives/SecureBoot-Message-Problem-after-upgrading-WIndows-to-8-1/td-p/135699/page/3

What helped me:

- When laptop starts press F2 so that it takes you to BIOS settings.

- Press right arrow until it takes you to Security tab.

- Go down to where it says "Select an UEFI file as trusted for executing" and hit Enter. If you can't access it, you need to set up a Supervisor password first.

- Once you hit Enter on "Select UEFI file...", it should show something like "HDD1", hit Enter, then you should see <EFI> hit Enter again. Now you have a few options one of them being <Boot> select that one and hit Enter.

- Scroll down and select bootx64.efi if you have it, if not then bootx32.efi, etc depending on your system.

- A window with text "Add a new file" asking "Do you wish to add this file to allowable database?" and in red "Boot Description" type/select Yes and hit Enter.

Before you restart move the arrow right to select the Boot tab, you have to have "Boot Mode  [UEFI]" and "Secure Boot [Enabled]".

 

The above is from the thread. What I did was:

Making sure boot mode was not in secure mode

Using bootx32.efi – I typed this into the space I created by opting to manually put in a UEFI safe boot source. Insydeh – you should be able to find what yours looks like by a google image search.

I turned off the fast start option in Windows. The following guide saved me and covers off 3 main issues I was having (create partiton/turn off fast start up/boot into Linux: specifically 3 and 4, Boot Menu and “…select the file to boot from”):

https://db.fyi/tutorials/install-ubuntu-16-04-fedora-23-dual-boot-windows-10

And here:

https://itsfoss.com/no-bootable-device-found-ubuntu/

 

This pretty much shows you the rest, but I just want to add one caveat. I tried a number of options on setting patritioning while in Fedora (the “untitled” option is your Windows partitions FYI – don’t delete them like I did – one of these links has a run down of how Linux reads partitions as opposed to how Windows does, read it!):

 

(Select “I will Configure partitioning” option and then click on Done.

In my case I have 40 GB space on which I will create following partitions :

• /boot – 500 MB ( file system type ext4 )
• /home – 10 GB ( file system type ext4 )
• /var – 10 GB ( file system type ext4 )
• /tmp – 5 GB ( file system type ext4 )
• swap – 2 GB

                        / – 12 GB ( file system type ext4 ):

 

But while I set the original disk partiton in Windows at 40GB, I found that the way that actually worked for me was when I clicked either “Automatically Configure Partitoning” in Instillation Destination, or when I clicked “Manual Partitoning” in Manual Partitioning. Sorry I cant remember which, the point is, Fedora did a better job of it than I could.

 

Instillation images and guide (a really good one that I used) can be found here:

http://www.linuxtechi.com/fedora-24-workstation-installation-steps/

 

This guide is also incredible – I used Gary Newells guides a lot:

 

http://linux.about.com/od/howtos/ss/A-Step-By-Step-Guide-To-Installing-Fedora-Linux.htm

 

And this:

 

https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/windows

 

I hope that helps, and I realize its somewhat scattered, but I wanted to bang something up ASAP in case anyone was pulling their hair out like I was. I will post up a set of slides when I can do screenshots etc and post PPT slides on my account in slideshare:

 

http://www.slideshare.net/Clintondenheyer/presentations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

philetus

I nominated it for the knowledge base. I've seen a few having problems installing Linux.

philetus

I nominated it for the knowledge base. I've seen a few having problems installing Linux.

ClintonDH

Cool - thanks bro - yea, sorry - posted in the wrong place! There are a few errors in here but anyone can feel free to hit me up right?

ClintonDH

I should add that I will be altering boot mode back to secure. It should dual boot in secure mode. Another key point that I almost forgot was in regards to Rufus. File System: The one that ended up working for me in the end was Fat32 from memory, but the deal breaker may have been:

 

Create a Bootable Image Using: (Dropdown Box - options: ISO, something else, and DD something). Rufus warned me when I initially tried ISO, but I forgot the first and probably 276th time also. It really pays to keep a pen and paper handy and note any forks you try so its easier to trace steps back FYI - anyway - Rufus mentioned that ISO can cause issues, in which case, use DD. I used DD on my last run and it was successful. Dont be afraid to give it a go.