I was talking to my dad yesterday and he talked about how he dual booted windows and Linux in his college days. I immediately left to download Ubuntu, I feel so dumb for forgetting it’s an option. I literally only use windows so I can play Fortnite with friends. PSA: you can have both Linux and Windows, or you can use a vm in Linux. Be (mostly) free from Microsoft’s clammy hands.
We used to dual boot before virtualization matured.
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wait, you can have two different systems, on two SSDs, on the same computer? this will be useful once i get to build my pc. Thanks!
i’m guessing having windows on a separate drive will mean that it won’t break GRUB?
I think they may actually be suggesting that you let each OS be the primary OS and then just control which one you want via boot order in the BIOS.
But yes, if Windows is able to install its boot loader on its own drive, it will not mess up the Linux boot loader on another drive. The Linux boot loader can detect Windows though and allow you to boot to it ( and Linux too of course ). That is why you make sure Linux boots first.
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I triple boot Windows with a Debian distro and an Arch distro. Windows is on one drive with its boot loader there so it doesn’t mess with the linux boot loaders and vice versa, and the two linux distros and their boot loaders are on a second drive. Just make sure Windows is already there and the linux boot loaders will pick it up.
Yeah, AFAIR, the issue of “windows messing up grub” could happen when it’s installed on the same disk (e.g. on a laptop with one disk). Something about it overwriting the “MBR sector”. At least that was a problem back before UEFI.
I too have been dual booting Windows 10 and Linux for many years now, each having their own physical disk, Linux one always being first in boot order. Not once did a Windows 10 update mess up grub for me with this setup.
Muahaha, long ago had a system with a removable 5.25" HDD bay. Matching drives in enclosures, 1 linux, 1 windows. One “permanent” drive in the machine for user data.
Super easy to swap between the OS when you’re physically changing the first drive on the IDE chain.
My current setup is two drives, a 500gb with windows and a 1tb sad with my Linux install on it. I set the 1tb to my first boot drive, so hopefully no windows shenanigans. I’m going to see if I can set up automatic backups soon just in case
I always found having each OS have a separate physical drive is much better, but partitioning is fine if you must.
Third world countries: We must 😔…
It’s a luxury indeed. Hopefully maybe a little less now that decent storage has come down in price a lot
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Have to agree on that. SSD and RAM prices have gone down significantly.
Partitioning is great with a boot partition for each OS,and linux chainloading to windows. Then I have aseparate NTFS drive as secondary drive in Windows and Linux, in case I need to work on data in either OS
Partitioning is great with a boot partition for each OS
Until Windows eats your Linux boot partition. I’ve learned my lesson, I only dual boot with separate drives now
Windows wont if you set two independent boot partitions, and you chainload from kinux grub to windows. windows never realizes there is another boot partition. Grub is your BIOS EFI default and Grub has an entry to kickoff windows boot. You can even boot to linux right after what ahould be a windows update restart, do your linux work and when you kickoff windows again the reatart and update continues. i have had this setup since 2017.
And when’s the last time that happened to you? I have Windows and Linux on my UEFI laptop on the same disk since 2020 and never had that happen on Windows 10 and 11.
A couple of years ago, don’t know exactly, but maybe 2018? Somewhere around there at least
Use Grub2Win (https://sourceforge.net/projects/grub2win/) whenever Windows manages to break dual booting. It’ll stop fucking up afterwards, as it’ll be installed within one of the windows boot partitions.
Personally I’m not a fan of dual booting. Admittedly it’s been many years since I have evn tried (now that virtualization is what it is), but when I did, grub would always break on me. It just wasn’t worth the hassle. Now to think of having to reboot to switch just makes me cringe. Lol
As others have said, I also highly recommend physically separate drives. I have found both Linux and Windows affect each other sometimes especially when you’re getting your bearings with dual booting.
For instance, after running Linux the clock in Windows will be wrong. And Windows will eat the Linux boot partition especially after feature packs (formerly called service packs), which come out about 1-2/year.
Just install linux 2nd and have it probe foreign OS, and create a linux only boot partition. Grub will then make a chainloader entry to windows boot partition. Linux won’t care if you select windows chainload option, and Windows won’t know it ia being chainloaded. No OS overlap. just set Grub Boot entry as primary boot in BIOS, EFI.
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I installed a second SSD into my new laptop and installed Debian on it. I set the new drive as the primary boot drive so windows doesn’t get a say and only loads when I select it from the boot menu. This way windows can’t trash the boot loader when it updates.
So much this, having each OS in a separate drive saves so many headaches
I only boot windows for Fortnite and The Crew 2 because of BS DRM. Everything else runs great.
imo dual booting is kinda clunky. Id rather have a vm of windows tbh. I dont like restarting my pc to swtich OS.
But hey if you like it, more power to you man.
Only did it bc anti cheats. I would use vms otherwise.
Ah I gotcha. Another option im considering is using a separate pc for windows and using a kvm to switch between them. That may be a good option for you as well if you can swing it.
