Re: Laptop advice

[Gary Dale <garydale@torfree.net>]

On 18/01/15 03:35 PM, Doug wrote:
> On 01/18/2015 12:21 PM, Gary Dale wrote:
> > On 18/01/15 10:29 AM, john@AgeingGracefully.ca wrote:
> > > I have never installed used nor installed linux on a laptop ($500 - 
> > > $600),
> > > however I have decided to buy one but before doing so I need some 
> > > advice. These
> > > are the questions that come to mind.
> > >
> > > 1. Graphics radeon or nvidia? I have nvidia on my desktop but have no
> > > experience with radeon.
> > > 2. WiFi what to avoid?
> > > 3. Dual boot? What problems should I expect?
> > >
> > > I will install Jessie from a thumb drive and upgrade to testing when 
> > > Jessie
> > > becomes stable.
> >
> > I generally prefer Radeon. Their drivers are often a bit better - 
> > especially the open source ones. NVidea has has some people swearing 
> > at them instead pf by them.  :)
> >
> > Most wifi just works. If it doesn't, you can get a really cheap USB 
> > wifi adapter.
> >
> > Dual-booting shouldn't create problems by itself. However Windows 
> > doesn't like having its partitions shrunk. I recommend doing a full 
> > backup before shrinking the Windows partition then booting into 
> > Windows immediately afterward.
> Various folks differ on Radeon vs. Nvidia, but I won't get into that 
> except to say that my Dell laptop uses Nvidia and it works fine.
>
> But the other question: I have heard that the best way to shrink 
> Windows partitions is to use the Windows system itself to do so.
> Somewhere there will be instructions--Google is your friend. I used 
> GParted, and I had some trouble, not knowing about the Windows
> capability. If I were to do it again, I would definitely use the 
> Windows software to shrink the partitions.
>
> --doug

The problem with Windows is that it won't shrink partitions very much in 
many cases. It seems to put some "unmovable" files at the end of a 
partition and won't let you shrink it smaller than their location. I 
don't know what the files are so I usually do a complete backup, use 
gparted to shrink the partition, restart in Windows to have it fix the 
file system, then copy the backed-up files back.

I don't know if this is overkill, but Windows is finicky enough without 
having some files missing or damaged.