Ideally, I would prefer to dual boot ( two different drives if necessary) Windows 11 and Linux Mint. From what I understand, the crap Microsoft is pulling now will prevent this. Is it because of bitlocker?
Either way, another option would be to dual boot windows 10 and Linux mint. I would keep Windows 10 offline, which is why I would prefer to dual boot Windows 11, since it and Linux would both be online.
So are either of these scenarios realistic?
I’d like to get answers before my post is deleted. So thank you in advance.
No one mentioned this yet, but a possible issue is that Windows, for some damn reason, still creates a 100MiB EFI partition, although by EFI spec It should be at least 256 iirc
This can cause the /boot/EFI partition to fill up. Some distros/bootloader are more affected than others, but I’ve had it happen a couple of times
So that’s why Fedora is complaining about running out of space on
/boot/efi!Can you elaborate a bit. I don’t understand the connection between the undersized Windows partition and the problem with a distro. Also is the fix to manually increase the size of that partition?
The connection is that while the “system drive” (
C:\in Windows,/in Linux) for each system has its own partition, the EFI partition is shared. This is the partition where the files needed to load the respective OSes live, aka the entries you see in the bootloader. You could create a new EFI partition and tell Linux to use that one, but then you would have to select the OS from the boot devices in the BIOS, so no one does that.Also is the fix to manually increase the size of that partition?
Well, yes, but the problem is that it’s at the start of the drive, usually. That means you can not expand it without moving the main Windows partition, which is a pretty bad idea (terrible on HDDs) as it’s prone to data loss. If your OEM put it at the end then you’re very lucky and it’s a quick operation, although it might require to delete some OEM-specific partition (which only serves to give you the branded wallpapers and bloatware if you factory reset from within Windows)
Honestly, if you don’t distrohop this shouldn’t be a problem. I had to do a stupid installation dance to have a 500MiB EFI partition, but I was motivated to do it because:
- I hate Microsoft
- I wanted to fuck around with kernels, bootloaders, and distros
I have had a Windows+Tumbleweed dual boot installed for years on a single SSD. The only precaution I take is to disable secure boot in BIOS because it is true that Windows sometimes encrypts the entire disk during updates and prevents you from accessing Linux. In short, disable secure boot and enjoy dual boot. 😉
Totally possible.
I recommend making room on your drive using windows tools to shrink the windows partition before letting your Linux installer add new ones, or doing it manually. This is just so that no weird filesystem bugs show up after resizing your ntfs filesystem with Linux tools. Never had a problem with them but it’s probably good to use Microsoft tools to mess with the Microsoft filesystem just in case.
Listen I’ve got garuda (the only thing I touch if I can help it), windows 11 (idk why but it hasn’t been able to update in a long time, so it’s basically useless), windows 10 on hdd (actually might be 8), and a 10 year old copy of Ubuntu on an hdd as my boot options because I just copied my college hdds when I upgraded them a few years ago.
If you intend to install both, install Windows first. It has a habit of overwriting other bootloaders.
When you install Linux second, it should install a bootloader that will let you choose which OS to boot each time you turn on the computer.
Always backup data you care about. Installing an OS carries some risk of data loss.
Excellent. Thank you for the advice. Having the boott selection come up is perfect. It’s going to be a new build. I hope Linux is happy. Last time I did this I had all kinds of trouble and was advised to wait for people to write drivers.
Drivers for what? Maybe that was 2008?
also as a suggestion for a os selector, i really likr rEFInd personally. good luck!
So this would replace grub?
yeah it would
What makes it better?
it has a nice ui and in my experience it picks up boot media automatically (live usbs, ssds, etc), plus it comes in handy if windows ever does nuke your existing boot menu since the install from a live usb is easy
Yes, you can still dual boot. I would recommend using two drives since it will make things easier. You can even use secure boot and bitlocker if you want to.
Thank you. Using Linux to surf the net and Windows to game and use Fusion 360, would be ideal. Maybe over time I could drop Windows 11 altogether.
This allows me to keep my old windows 10 machine for all the things I do now. I could just take it offline since most of the stuff I use it for doesn’t require Internet connection.
Dunno what games you’re playing, but Linux can handle the vast majority these days with Proton.
In addition to dual booting, you can create a persistent USB drive. It’s a little tedious, but kind of a cool way to give your setup a spin.
I think you need Rufus to format the drive, to set up the USB drive so it doesn’t refresh when you reboot. I’m sure there are speed implications, but I’ve actually found it snappy enough for basic stuff once it loads. It’s a cool way to try different distros. I have a handful lying around. I still preferred mint in the end.
Awesome. Thanks.
Done this for my partner - usb goes in to boot to Linux, take it out to boot back to pre-existing Windows, really simple. Fedora will install to usb no problem. Windows can’t screw up this way either, bit safer then using same drive. Speed has not been a problem.
It sure is possible, I’m currently dual booting win11 and fedora on my laptop, so they actually share a drive.
If you want to do it on one drive I’d recommend first shrinking your windows partition to whatever size your comfortable with in the windows disk management tool (whatever they call it, I don’t remember off the top of my head), then when you initialize a Linux mint install it should be able to recognize that windows partition. From there it’ll give you the option to either wipe the whole drive, or install in the empty space alongside Windows.
For what it’s worth I’ve had little to no issues dual booting both, it’s been working for me just fine. Although I will say, I think I actually have bitlocker encryption disabled, though I can’t say for certain and am unable to check at the moment. It would make sense for that to cause issues, so it would definitely be worth looking into.
Thank you for your post. I think I will use two different drives and hopefully use Windows as little as possible.
For sure the ideal scenario. I wish you luck friend
Quick PSA if you’re dual booting from the same drive, the boot partition size is dictated by the windows install. There is chance that when you’re doing a system upgrade on linux, when recompiling initramfs is necessary, you run out of space on the boot partition since linux makes a fallback/backup boot partition. This might block you from upgrading unless you manually delete (and back them up) the images and run mkinitcpio -P manually. Note that this may result in bricking your system, but it isn’t hard to fix if you have some experience.
Yes. But like @18107@aussie.zone said, Windows has a bad tendency to overwrite the bootloader, and that can happen down the road during an update of theirs.
That’s why people recommend using a separate physical drive to install linux on if dualbooting with windows, because then you choose what you want to boot up on with the UEFI boot menu instead which Windows can’t overwrite (yet?).This was my concern. So if I boot into Windows and it does a mandatory update, currently, it can’t effect the Linux install if it’s on a different physical drive? Do I have that correct?
It won’t affect linux itself, you can restore the bootloader and get into linux when windows does that, it’s just that it’s a pain in the arse to restore. But yes, it has happened not too long ago that windows overwrote the linux bootloader. Microsoft obviously claimed it was an accident, but they obviously don’t care.
And no, on a separate drive windows won’t touch it at all.EDIT: Maybe it’s not so hard to restore grub loader as I thought, could be as simple as these steps.
Thanks. You rock!
This is the way. Just use fast ssds to install all your operating systems. Ideally on separate disks.
And have a live usb ready, if you need to restore your grub boot loader.
Dual boot sucks in the long run. Every time you run a system update on windows or Linux you run the risk of messing up your boot loader.
I recommend not dual booting. Either use a VM for windows or have a dedicated machine that’s windows only.
I run this pretty much exact setup, with Windows and Linux on 2 drives.
Definitely run 2 drives.
Set the main boot in the BIOS to the Linux drive, you can get grub to recognize windows so your boot menu goes to linux by default, but you can still select windows if you feel like slumming it. This keeps windows from messing with Grub.
Dual-booting works fine. You can even have more than two OSes - for a while I was running Windows 10, Fedora, and Debian. Ended up sticking with Fedora.
I have my old 10 install and my Mint install on different drives. I just unplug the one I don’t want and swap them physically to change.
It was a great point of friction when I switched to Linux because booting Windows meant actual physical action which acted as a deterrent.
Yes but I do recommend installing the two OSes on a different storage device. That’s what I did for my PC.
I’m currently dual-booting Windows 11 and Fedora Silverblue (actually the
ublue-os/silverblue-nvidiaimage) with secure boot enabled. No BitLocker, though.So should bitlocker be disabled?
I’ve never tried it, so I don’t know. From what I can tell, BitLocker should work. Windows seems to be happy with my current security settings.
Ok. Great.
