Linux

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.

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.

If you have two drives, you can put linux on one and windows on the other fine

If you have one drive, you can split it into two at partition step.

I was pentabooting with 4 linux and 1 windows at some point. It works fine.

Just remember to save your microsoft account password somewhere just in case they lock your windows account for some reason.

Also a cool tip. Installing linux aftet windows works perfectly, but installing windows after linux often breaks grub.

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.

I’m currently dual-booting Windows 11 and Fedora Silverblue (actually the ublue-os/silverblue-nvidia image) with secure boot enabled. No BitLocker, though.

Dual booting is fine. Bitlocker just makes it so that the installer isn't able to resize the Windows partition (since it's encrypted), but you can resize it in Windows to create enough space to put Mint on. You can also disable bitlocker entirely, but your files will no longer be encrypted.

There's worry about the bootloader being nuked, but I think that's a bit of an overreaction. Now everything is EFI, Windows shouldn't touch other OSes. If it does, then that doesn't require a full reinstall; it's possible to boot from the live USB (the installer) and reinstall just the bootloader.

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

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.

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.

Yes but I do recommend installing the two OSes on a different storage device. That's what I did for my PC.

You can still use Windows 10 connected to the internet. Same safety precautions apply whether you're on Linux or Windows 10.

1. Don't run executables from the internet unless you trust them. Be extra cautious with Windows 10.
2. Close all the open inbound ports in Windows Firewall (you don't need them for anything anyway).
3. Close them all again because FFS WINDOWS I CLOSED THEM FOR A REASON SO STOP OPENING THEM.
4. Use a browser that's still getting security updates, so if you're on Microsoft Edge for some reason then ... nevermind if you're still on Microsoft Edge in 2025 then there's no saving you.
5. Keep physical access restricted. I gave up trying to configure bitlocker but if you can set it up then that'll better resolve this.
6. Keep an eye out for news of critical vulnerabilities, particularly ones that score high in terms of "Base Metrics".

I've also put in a firewall rule that prevents Microsoft Edge from accessing the internet entirely, but that's more out of spite than security. Windows keeps overriding my Firewall settings anyway so I don't think it'll have much of an effect.

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. 😉

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?).

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.