There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Can Linux be dual booted on a computer with Windows?

I have a Lenovo Yoga running Windows 10 on a 1TB SSD and at some point will probably have to upgrade it to Windows 11. I use it for school and have to keep Windows on it for now because of what I’m currently doing. I want to start getting into Linux in hopes of making the switch sometime down the line. Is partitioning the disk and dual booting Windows/Linux a thing and is it possible/easy to do? If so, what distro would anyone recommend? (I’ve heard good things about Mint). Back in the day I had gotten bored one night, installed Ubuntu on an external drive and played around with it a very tiny bit before forgetting about it, but that’s the extent of my Linux knowledge, so kindly keep explanations ELI5 :)

Edit: Thank you everyone! You’ve given me lots of good advice and knowledge, some terms to Google, and some good places to start. I appreciate it! Looking forward to joining the wonderful world of Linux!

Veraxis ,

Yep, I dual boot on my laptop so that I can run certain programs for my schoolwork as well. I use Refind as my boot manager so that I can easily select one or the other on startup.

ohlaph ,

I did something slightly different. I dual boot windows and linux. But each one is on a different hard drive. I have two SSDs that each one is dedicated to. Makes things easier.

Fisch ,
@Fisch@lemmy.ml avatar

I agree with the others that testing in a VM (Virtual Machine) first is probably a good idea. Keep in mind that because of missing 3D acceleration inside a VM things like desktop animations might not work.

As for distros, I’d recommend Mint or Fedora. I personally use Fedora.

What’s also important is the desktop environment you choose. The most popular ones are GNOME and KDE Plasma. GNOME is closer to MacOS than Windows and is made to just work while KDE Plasma has a layout similar to Windows out of the box but is very customizable and has a lot of options. Ubuntu uses GNOME but they make quite a few changes to it. Fedora uses GNOME by default but there’s also a KDE Plasma version, I think. Mint doesn’t have these 2 by default, you can always install them if you want to afterwards tho. The 3 options Mint gives you are also more Windows-like but I haven’t tried them myself, so I can’t tell you much about them. A VM would give you the ability to just install them, try them out and delete them afterwards. I personally use GNOME btw.

rah ,

dual booting

Where did you learn this phrase?

shadowSprite OP ,

I have no idea. I’ve known it for years. All my computer knowledge is self taught so random things I’m fairly knowledgeable on and then there’s things that are common knowledge I’ve never heard of. I’m doing my best out here! I was a sheltered kid who grew up into an adult that doesn’t know anyone tech savvy!

Tlaloc_Temporal ,
@Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca avatar

XKCD maybe?

xkcd.com/349/index.html

nossaquesapao ,

It can. Perhaps this link can help you: tomshardware.com/…/dual-boot-linux-and-windows-11

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •