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I want to do a dual boot of Windows XP and Ubuntu 14.04 on a very old Acer Aspire 3690 laptop. Are there any peculiarities of installing Ubuntu with dual boot on Acer Aspire laptops?

To be specific, I don't want to mess partition that contains recovery copy of Windows XP. Laptop HDD is divided into 2 partitions, one for OS, another for data. I've already formatted and cleared the data partition and want to install Ubuntu there. Is it safe to do, will Ubuntu install not mess with the rest of the hard drive? On laptop it says that it was designed for Windows XP, it worries me too.

I also want to install a 64-bit version of Ubuntu. I'm aware that on such laptop it's generally useless, I just need to develop applications for my 64 bit Ubuntu desktop. But I don't know if hardware can support this. This are hardware parameters:

CPU: Intel Celeron M 420 1.60 GHz

Chipset: Intel 940GML Express

Video: Intel GMA 950

RAM: 512 mb

Also I guess I need to install a "lighter" version of OS on such laptop. What would be the best solution in such case? Lubuntu?

Urfin
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3 Answers3

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We have an Acer Aspire 5253 which runs Lubuntu very well but its stats are quite a bit better than those, especially the RAM. I am pretty sure stock Ubuntu 14.04 won't work well at all with 512 meg.

Also I don't think you can use 64 bit Ubuntu because that is a 32 bit processor according to this Intel site.

My 2 cents worth is to try running 32 bit Lubuntu from a live CD or USB and see if it works OK, before you do anything irreversible.

Organic Marble
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Once you've picked your OS (I think Lubuntu would be your best bet as well) it should be pretty straightforward from there. create a bootable drive (you need to determine if your computer can boot from USB or CD/DVD). You also may need to access your BIOS settings, which you usually get to from hitting F11/F10/F12 repeatedly at startup. from here, make sure that you can boot from your drive (it helps to have your drive inserted before accessing this so that it populates the boot menu directory). and restart the computer. once the live OS starts up, just follow the prompts. it should detect your existing OS, and you instruct it to install (L)ubuntu alongside it. following this, just point it to the proper partition to install onto. you may or may not want to set up a paging partition, but you can do this during the install out of the partition you already have set aside for it.

Will
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Thanks for the answers!

I've installed Lubuntu alongside Windows XP and now have a dual boot system on this Acer Aspire laptop. I didn't even need to point which partition to install to, it immediately suggested the data partition which I've prepared for installation before. Windows OS partition and hidden recovery partition were left untouched.

Performance seems to be acceptable. I haven't worked with it much to say for sure, but it definitely boots faster than Windows XP and Firefox seems to show better performance than on XP system.

Urfin
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