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What to know before Dual Booting Windows + Linux?

I’m looking to finally use Linux properly and I’m planning to dual boot my laptop. There’s enough storage to go around, and while I’m comfortable messing around I’d rather not have to run and buy a new device before school while fixing my current one.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=VaIgbTOvAd0

This was the general guide I was planning to follow, just with KDE Plasma (or another KDE). I was going to keep windows the default, and boot into Linux as needed when I had time to learn and practice.

I assume it should be the near similar process for KDE Plasma?

I’m ok with things going wrong with the Linux install, but I’d like to keep the Windows install as safe as possible.

Swarfega ,

Backup all your data

AphoticDev ,
@AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Unless you have a reason to keep Windows, for example some software you depend on that doesn’t run under Linux, just get rid of windows. There’s no real reason to keep it around if you don’t need it for a particular reason.

olafurp ,

Since he’s asking he probably has a reason.

AphoticDev ,
@AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

The reason is most likely the same as it was for most Linux newcomers. They’ve used Windows for a long time, and aren’t to the point where they are comfortable enough to cut Windows off entirely.

otter OP ,

It’s hard to predict when a course will require some software that’s windows only. Either that or support (from TAs and profs) will be specific to Mac & Windows.

Thought a good compromise might be to keep it

spaghettiwestern ,

Keep your Linux partition backed up! Windows update deleted my EXT4 partition and all Linux data on my laptop. (No, it wasn’t a Grub problem, the partition was gone.) There are reports this Microsoft BS going back years.

AffineConnection ,

When was this?

spaghettiwestern ,

About 7 months ago. A Google search will turn up other reports of the issue.

deadcatbounce ,
@deadcatbounce@reddthat.com avatar

That you eventually delete the Windows partition.

Presi300 ,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

Install windows 1st, Linux 2nd. Generally speaking Linux installers won’t mess up a windows install, however most of the time the windows installer WILL mess up a Linux install.

Don’t think of Linux the same way as windows, think of it as desktop android. Do not download applications from the browser, unless they’re not available literally anywhere else, use the app center instead. Use a popular distro (Ubuntu/Ubuntu variant, fedora, etc…).

Use Wayland.

AffineConnection ,

use the app center

That’s a weird thing to call a package manager.

Presi300 ,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

I call package manager the CLI program…

eah ,

Some day you may find your machine booting into linux without displaying a grub menu. You were promised a menu giving you boot options. Where is it? The problem may be your grub timeout is 0. Set the timeout in /etc/default/grub and then run update-grub. See section 6.1 of the info grub manual.

russjr08 ,
@russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net avatar

In the same config file, you can also re-enable the “OS Prober” setting, which was turned off in some distros by default, which can also cause windows to not be displayed.

I’m not sure which distros have overridden this option to being back on by default on new installs, since AFAIK it was changed upstream.

gamey ,
@gamey@feddit.rocks avatar

Windows likes to fuck with your Linux boot loader after every feature update!

jemorgan ,

I haven’t had this happen in years, maybe it’s my config? I’m using GPT on a UEFI system (in UEFI mode), with systemd-boot.

I do remember having tons of issues back when I was using grub on an MBR system using legacy bios emulation.

gamey ,
@gamey@feddit.rocks avatar

None of my computers had Windows in years so I can’t really tell you but that sounds plausible to me

jemorgan ,

Only thing keeping on my disk is fusion360, so annoying to have to deal with booting into windows just to use a single piece of software.

gamey ,
@gamey@feddit.rocks avatar

F

nottheengineer ,

The video missed one small, but very important thing: You need to disable fast boot in windows before mounting your windows partition in linux, otherwise it will get corrupted.

The reason for that is that windows doesn’t actually shut down if you tell it to by default and it leaves the drive in a dirty state. Windows itself can pick that back up and boot off of it, but linux won’t detect it. If you leave fast boot on, windows will run chkdsk on the next boot after using linux.

I found that out the hard way and got to not use my computer while it ran chkdsk on my 4TB HDD. It took 15 hours.

lemba ,

This is the best advice!

Anticorp ,

Keep the boot sectors for Linux and Windows separate. Windows loves to fubar the Linux boot instructions during update. They somehow still manage to break the Linux boot section even when it’s on its own isolated sector, but it happens a lot less frequently.

AFAIK you can’t use drive encryption when dual-booting on the same HDD.

GreatAlbatross ,
@GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk avatar

Have a think about how you want to arrange your data. While you can access windows partitions and files under Linux (and vise versa), it’s better not to be constantly be mounting your windows C drive from another OS. Plus, if you’re mid-update, or had to restart suddenly, windows will happily mark your drive as read-only.

I use 4 partitions for a dual boot. Sizes are based on a 1TB drive.

  • Windows C (100GB or so, OS drive). Only mounted by Linux if I have a big problem.
  • Windows D (NTFS formatted, my main storage partition. Mounted all the time by Linux. 700GB or so)
  • Linux root (50GB or so, EX4 formatted)
  • Linux storage (remaining space, EX4 formatted used for big programs, games, home folder)

This way, Windows OS is separate, main storage is accessible to both without tripping over permissions, linux root drive is separate from storage so reinstalling isn’t so painful if something goes very wrong.

Crozekiel ,

This is probably some of the best advice here. Keep the drives (if possible, if not partitions) each OS is on separate from the other. Have a 3rd drive (or partition) as the bulk of your storage that both can see and use.

I’d also suggest reversing your plan of mainly using windows and hopping to linix when you want to and make it Linux default and windows when you have to. You’ll learn more immersing yourself in Linux that way, and you’ll find whatever issues or software that force you back to windows (if any). The other way around you’ll feel that Linux doesn’t do anything you need it to and likely spend very little time in it at all. Habits are hard to change.

slowbyrne ,
@slowbyrne@beehaw.org avatar

Backup all your personal data on windows prior to attempting anything. On a separate disk and cloud if possible. For cloud backups, just pick the important stuff. No need to backup steam libraries since steam servers are the backup in this case.

Like others have said, if you can use a separate disk, do that. If you can’t do that and you just want to try out Linux, use a USB live disk to test hardware compatibility and the user experience, or if you have an old laptop or desktop that isn’t being used, load Linux on that first.

Pick a popular distro for better community support. If you have a recently released laptop (less than a year old) might want to pick a distro with newer kernel for better hardware support. My personal recommendations are Pop!_OS, Fedora (both gnome and KDE versions). Both work well on newer hardware. Others you might want to try are Linux Mint and Ubuntu.

After getting Linux installed, try and keep your home partition backed up, especially if Windows is on the same disk.

Try and use Flatpak for all your apps, flathub is the web “store” for Flatpak apps.

Be open to trying the Linux alternative to apps since the windows version might not be available.

This is a new OS so expecting things to work a certain way isn’t realistic.

Most of the time a GUI is available for what you need to do, but learning the terminal is super helpful and a lot of people prefer it once they make the switch.

When searching online, try to include your distro and its version. It will help narrow down results.

If you’re gaming, check ProtonDB for game compatibility, and be willing to tinker a bit.

If you do have Nvidia graphics, Pop!_OS and other distros that bake the drivers into the disk image or install process are better for beginners.

Opinion portion: Firefox is a better holistic choice over chromium based browsers (see Google’s web environment integrity aka DRM for the web). KDE is a great desktop for people who like the Windows workflow, but I prefer Gnome. Nvidia graphics are much less problematic these days, but I still prefer amd and Intel hardware.

Life is hard; everyone is doing their best; be hard on problems and soft on people.

Good luck ;)

Frederic ,

First, if you have only one HD, you’ll have to shrink your windows partition. You’ll have maybe 4 partitions already on your disk, a 100MB fat one for EFI, a 16MB one unformatted, a few GB recovery one, and a big one with windows on it, you may have more. Booting on a linux USB stick or with the gparted ISO, you’ll need to shrink your windows partition and let whatever the size you want, say 100GB, for your future linux, free.

You need to disable secure boot in your bios.

When installing linux, it will ask you for custom partitioning (it’s your first install, play with it, if you don’t like your partitions, want or not a swap, etc, you’ll redo it later!). Create a 20GB partition for / the root, create the remaining (e.g. 80GB) for your /home, these are the mount point that the installer ask in the custom partitioning screen. You will need to select the 100MB EFI partition as EFI/ESP mount point and keep it like this, no formatting for this one, just select it. Continue install, it will ask if you want to install GRUB, say yes, on ESP/EFI.

You may need to go in your BIOS and have to change the boot option to properly boot in EFI/GRUB. On my PC the BIOS boot option can bypass EFI and directly boot windows partition so I never had GRUB appearing.

Jmr ,

Install windows as usual. And then install your Linux distro. Quite alot of them give you the option to easily install alongside windows

Cralder ,

Windows and Linux keeps track of time differently. One stores the time in your current time zone. The other stores the GMT time and adds an offset. I forget which one does what but it results in your time being wrong each time you switch from Linux to Windows or vice versa. You can search for how to fix it, its not very hard, or you can just ignore it and reset your clock each time you switch OS.

Frederic ,

This is easily fix, especially at install, when I install Linux, I click on “keep hardware clock in local time” or something.

SpaceCadet , (edited )
@SpaceCadet@sopuli.xyz avatar

I don’t think that’s the case anymore.

I just checked, the time in the UEFI BIOS is in UTC, yet both Linux and Windows 10 display the local time correctly as an offset to UTC. I didn’t have to do anything special for that.

Edit:

So I looked a bit deeper into it, and this is apparently controlled by a registry key called RealTimeIsUniversal in [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlTimeZoneInformation]. You can paste the text below in a .reg file and then import it to set the parameter:


<span style="color:#323232;">Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlTimeZoneInformation]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">"RealTimeIsUniversal"=dword:00000001
</span>

I confirmed that this setting exists on my system, but I have no memory of ever manually setting this parameter. It’s documented in the Arch wiki though, so it’s possible that I did set it and forgot about it.

In any case, if you do a fresh Windows install and your time differs between Linux and Windows , this is what you should check.

Tippon ,

It is with Windows 10 and Mint. I booted into Mint a few days ago, and when I switched back to Windows, the time was wrong.

Apparently it’s easy to fix, but I keep forgetting while I’m in Mint >.<

SpaceCadet ,
@SpaceCadet@sopuli.xyz avatar

See my edit.

Tippon ,

That’s really helpful, thanks :)

RockyC ,
@RockyC@fosstodon.org avatar

@Tippon @SpaceCadet you can set your system clock to UTC to fix the problem. Here’s a registry fix to tell Windows to use UTC.

https://uilton.com/kb/how-to-make-windows-store-time-in-utc/

Tippon ,

Brilliant, thank you :)

putoelquelolea ,

You can also fix it by running the following command on your Linux machine:

timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock

Tippon ,

Thank you :)

Pantherina ,

You could but this as an autostart script:


<span style="color:#323232;">cat > ~/.config/autostart/adjust-time &lt;
</span>
luthis ,

I did this, and now I would say ‘is it really worth it?’

After a while of dual booting I realised I was never using Windows, I was only using it originally for playing Oblivion.

It’s probably good experience though, and you will learn a bit about GRUB.

I would argue instead, identify which applications you need Windows for, and then determine what is required to run those on Linux or find alternatives. And then just make the switch.

Linux is kinda simple. Everything is a file.

nottheengineer ,

I went about it the other way around. I switched to linux because I was tired of windows and found alternatives to the software I was used to along the way.

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