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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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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.
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.
Same. Fedora on one drive, Windows on a second drive.
Thanks.
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.
What arcane blasphemy were you up to that required you to pentaboot 😭
One for CTFs.
One for programming.
One for university.
One for distrohopping, I tried all the way up to openbsd on that partition.
Windows one did not show up on my grub so I simply forgot it exists over time.
That makes no sense at all.
And in the darkness bind them?
How else would you try the latest arch distro? Lol
At that point wouldn't it be better to run a hypervisor? Qubes maybe?
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.
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.
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 on the boot partition. This might block you from upgrading unless you manually delete (and backup) 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.
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.
You're right that Windows SHOULDN'T touch other OSes, but I've personally had windows update nuke my grub partition, like last year on an i5 11th gen laptop. Dual booting on the same drive? Don't do it!
Thank you.
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:
Ok. Thanks.
I’m currently dual-booting Windows 11 and Fedora Silverblue (actually the ublue-os/silverblue-nvidia image) 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.
You can still use Windows 10 connected to the internet. Same safety precautions apply whether you're on Linux or Windows 10.
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.
Thanks but Fusion 360 says it will not work after January 1 on Windows 10. I might be able to migrate to FreeCad but I don't have time to figure that out any time soon, plus I'm sure there are some games I'm going to be playing that the net says won't work on Linux.
I would keep Windows 10 offline, which is why I would prefer to dual boot Windows 11
I was responding to this. If you have different reasons then that's fine.
Oh I see. Yeah, I would prefer not to chance it security-wise. Which is funny because Microsoft IS the security risk.
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.
In my experience, though it’s been a long while since I dual booted (think windows 7), it’s usually windows who fuck up the bootloader
Yes but I do recommend installing the two OSes on a different storage device. That's what I did for my PC.
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?).