Raymond's Weblog

I know in my last post that I said that I won’t ever install Windows ever again and live with Linux (Ubuntu for one) for the rest of the time that I have this laptop. Well, that lasted about 3 days and I also threw Ubuntu out the window (literally!). For some odd reason,Ubuntu 12.10 only saw one of the two cores that I have in my laptop (which has a Core i7 with Hyperthreading which in Linux (with the right kernel) act as they were cores). So, what to do with my Dell XPS 15z? Read on!

First, Install Windows 8 Pro!

Ok, first thing to really is to take out my second hard drive since there’s a little hitch with Windows 8 that needs to be fixed. Every time I tried to install Windows 8, it would try to install on the wrong hard drive and boot from it. So, as a good hacker, I uninstalled it. Once that was done, installing Windows 8 on the 128GB SSD was as easy as pie!. Boot times of the operating system are fast! From power button push to log in screen is around 5 seconds. Not bad for a Microsoft product. My review of Windows 8 will come later when I have fully configured it for how I use the laptop. But after the installation and primary boot of the OS, I decided that I should put the extra hard drive back in. Up next, Linux Mint!

Installing Linux Mint (Mate)

Installing Linux is usually pretty straight forward if you are installing all by its lonesome. It gets a bit tricky if you try to install it in a “Dual Boot” system. For one, If you only have one hard drive, you need to be very careful about how you partition that drive. For me, It was pretty straight forward with a little bit of a twist. I installed the OS onto a partition on my second hard drive but only gave it a 20 or 40 GB partition. I figured that most of my data will go on the unused partition (almost 450GB of space) and can be used by both operating systems. In fact, this is what I do and it’s fun trying to figure out which operating system I used to open files last. 

There is one one problem that I really hate that has to do with how Dell put the hardware together in my laptop. I have to modify the bootloader for the computer so I can get full keyboard and mouse use out of the computer. This isn’t really that big of a deal, but I don’t like to open files and edit them so I can have a mouse and keyboard that works. Maybe this will be another post where I should show everyone how it’s done (with code examples). 

Over all Results!

As for the laptop running two operating systems, it has gone pretty smooth. I can’t complain. Windows 8 is very stable and the “Metro Style” start page stays out of the way most of the time on the Pro version. As far as Linux Mint, I like it very much and it’s very stable for a Linux distro. When both are added to a laptop, they are very powerful tools to have in my world (at least) and will serve me well. I plan on keeping this laptop for quite a few years before I buy another (most likely another Dell). My question to you is, what operating system do you use? Let me know.