First post here, if this place isn’t for tech support, I’ll remove it.

I’ve heard dual booting Linux and Windows isn’t a good idea because Windows Update will nuke the Linux boot loader, so I’ve avoided doing that.

For a very long, technical, and complicated reason, I still need Windows because one piece of software that I absolutely MUST have is only compatible with Windows. No, there is no alternative software available for my use case; none, zero, not any, at all. I’ve already tried running it within many different VMs, using many different hypervisors, and I’ve already tried Wine; they aren’t an option, the software isn’t stable in those cases. I don’t want to get in the weeds about it, so please just accept that I NEED some version of Windows installed.

Since Windows 10 doesn’t receive updates anymore, can I dual boot Linux and Windows 10 without worrying about whether Windows Update will break anything?

I intend to keep Windows on one drive and Linux on another. Windows would only be used when I need to run this one specific program, which is maybe five or ten hours per week. The rest of the time, I’d be using Linux.

  • BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    As others have said, if they’re on different drives then there is no issue.

    The best way to set things up is to make the Linux drive the 1st in the boot order, and ensure Windows 10 is detected in the linux bootloader (almost always Grub). This is a chained bootloader set up - the linux bootloader is first, and if you select Windows 10 in it, it then opens the bootloader on the windows drive which then boots Windows. When they’re on separate drives windows won’t touch it, and linux also won’t touch window’s bootloader.

    I’d advise turning off Fastboot in Windows (Fastboot means windows doesn’t shut down fully, and instead hibernates - it’s a trick to make the system boot fasther but it can cause issues when you try to boot back in after using another system). I’d also turn off Secure Boot if you haven’t already - it’s good in theory but in practice it’s pretty broken in a dual boot set up due to Microsoft’s behaviour.