Dual Boot Ubuntu on Dell Alienware Aurora R12

Photo by Gabriel Heinzer on Unsplash

Hi Readers! Let me make a quick introduction. I am a Data Engineer and Data Scientist who has been working with Apache Spark closely for the past four years. I also have interests in Kubernetes and GPU capabilities, but have less experience in those areas.

This is actually the first article in what will be a series of articles documenting the journey of running an Apache Spark cluster on Kubernetes with NVIDIA GPU access on an Alienware Aurora R12. Whew, that was a lot of buzzwords.

I originally purchased my Alienware Aurora R12 desktop for gaming, but it didn’t take long until I wanted to use that beefy GPU inside for my data engineering tasks: enter my desire to dual-boot Linux .

So, the first step to turn my Alienware desktop into a Linux powerhouse was to figure out how to dual boot Ubuntu (my Linux flavour of choice). So, let’s jump into the steps I took and hurdles I encountered.

Step 1 (Optional): Buy some more storage

I personally did not want to partition my existing SSD that was already booting Windows and storing all of my games. So, I purchased some more storage exclusively for Ubuntu.

The motherboard of my Alienware Aurora R12 had an empty PCIe 4.0 slot, so I decided to use that in conjunction with NVMe storage. I had to buy two things:

1. PCIe 4.0 to NVMe Adapter: I bought the Sabrent NVMe M.2 SSD to PCIe Adapter with Heat Sink
2. NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD: I bought the 2TB Sabrent NVMe M.2 PCIe 4.0 2280 SSD

Once the components were installed, all I had to do was boot Windows 11 as normal. Windows 11 immediately recognized the additional storage.

Step 2: Prepare Ubuntu

To install Ubuntu, you need to put an Ubuntu Image on a USB Drive. Any USB drive will, just make sure it has enough space to store all of the required Ubuntu files.

First, I cleared all data off of my USB drive, and then re-partioned it using Windows. Once the drive was ready, I downloaded the Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS Image from https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop.

The last step here is to put Ubuntu onto the USB drive. At first, I just copy-pasted the image onto the drive and thought that was enough (silly me). It turns out that will not work — you need to format the USB drive into bootable Ubuntu by expanding the downloaded image. To do this, I recommend a piece of software called Rufus: https://rufus.ie/en/. I used Rufus to transform my USB into an Ubuntu-booting companion, and I was ready to go.

Step 3: Windows Settings

There is one Windows setting that has to be disabled before booting Ubuntu: Fast Startup. Why? Well , because this guide says so: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000131253/how-to-install-ubuntu-and-windows-8-or-10-as-a-dual-boot-on-your-dell-pc. I’m just trusting the guys at Dell on this one.

To disable Fast Startup:

1. Open the Windows 11 search bar and search for “powercfg.cpl”. This will open “Power Options” in the control panel.
2. On the left-hand side menu, select “Choose what the power button does”
3. Select “Change settings that are currently unavailable.”
4. Un-check the blue box next to “Turn on fast startup”
5. Click “Save changes” in the bottom of the Window.

You may have noticed that the above link also includes (different) steps on how to turn off Fast Startup. However, those steps did not work for me (either because they’re outdated, or I just couldn’t figure it out. The latter is definitely possible).

Step 4: BIOS

Before I get into what settings need to be changed in the BIOS, I have to mention that my Alienware BIOS UI looks nothing like the BIOS UI I found in any of the guides online, including the official Dell guide. This was honestly a big driver as to why I decided to write this article.

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There are two options that need to be changed in the BIOS:

1. Secure Boot needs to be turned off. This will give the computer permission to boot from a USB drive.
2. The Storage Mode needs to be changed from RAID ON to AHCI. Ubuntu does not support communications with the Intel RAID controller, only Windows does. They both support Adavanced Host Contoller Interface (AHCI), however.

To do both of the above, boot the computer into BIOS. To do that, re-start the computer and rapidly press the F2 key. The Alienware BIOS will appear on screen.

To find the “Disable secure boot” option, go to the Security tab on the left-hand side menu. NOT the Boot tab. I may or may not have spent half a day trying to figure out where the heck the secure boot option was. Then, scroll all the way down on the Security menu. The Disable secure boot option will be the last option on the list. Enable it.

To change the Storage Mode from RAID On to AHCI, go to either the Boot tab or Advanced tab (don’t remember exactly which one it was at the moment) on the left-hand side menu. Changing from RAID On to ACHI will be the first option on the menu.

Step 5: Ubuntu Setup

At this point, everything is good-to-go to install Ubuntu.

Plug-in the USB drive to the computer, then restart. When the computer boots again, rapidly press the F12 key. This will take you to the boot options menu. There should be an option to boot from USB. Use the arrow keys to navigate to the option and press enter to select it.

This will take you to the Ubuntu boot menu. On this menu, you should see four options: “Try or Install Ubuntu”, “Ubuntu (safe graphics)”, “Boot from next volume”, “UEFI Firmware settings”. Select “Ubuntu (safe graphics)”.

For context, I did try the “Try or Install Ubuntu” option, which seems to be the go-to option for all of the available dual boot guides out there. However, all I saw after selecting this option was a black screen and an unresponsive computer. I tried this various times with the same result. This may be because of the NVIDIA GPU. Anyways, “Ubuntu (safe graphics)” is the one that worked for me.

From here, follow along with the Ubuntu Installer GUI to complete installation. The options I chose in sequence were:

1. Set the Language and Time Zone.
2. Select “Install Ubuntu”
3. Select “Normal Installation”
4. Enable “Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware”. This will install the NVIDIA drivers.
5. Select “Manual Partitioning”
6. Under the partitioning menu, find the drive you want to partition. For me, this was my 2 TB NVMe. Then, allocate storage for root (/), home (/home) and a swap area partition. I chose 500 GB for root, 1.45 TB for home, and 50 GB for swap.
7. Set you username and password

From here, Ubuntu will finish the install for you and take you to the login screen. Now you should have Ubuntu dual-booting on your Alienware! Hack away :).

Note: I will add images to this guide soon.