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.
Thank you for the implementation advice, that was my next question.
I have an old drive I installed Win 10 on a few years ago. It was a fresh build, so it would have been the only drive in the machine when I installed it. The software I need is already installed there and in a working state.
I also have a new machine with a new drive. I installed Mint on the new drive while it was the only drive in the new machine.
My plan is to move the Win 10 drive from the old machine to the new one. In the BIOS, I would set the Linux drive as the default boot option. When I need Windows, I would boot into BIOS and select the Windows drive as a one-time boot option.
Am I on the right track?
You can absolutely swap the primary boot entry in the BIOS by hand, but as mentioned, GRUB can be made to show an entry for Windows 10 upon normal boot. You can select that entry rather than swap the primary target in the BIOS, which will be a time saver when switching OS. Some configuration to get GRUB to pick it up will likely need to be done however.
For that to work, one needs to uncomment a line in
/etc/default/grub(#GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=falsebecomesGRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false). If the line simply isn’t present in/etc/default/grub, just add it at the bottom.For GPT, EFI installations
On modern (EFI, GPT) systems, there is specifically one partition you will need to persistently mount from the Windows drive through fstab, being the Windows EFI partition. It does not matter particularly where it is mounted, as long as it is out of the way (a mount point like
/windowsis fine). You’ll have to create an empty directory preferably somewhere under/and owned byroot, and then add the Windows EFI partition as a line to/etc/fstab. The command line utilitieslsblkandblkidcan help to determine the disk partition layout and the EFI partition’s UUID. The ‘Disks’ utility installed by default in Mint can also do this, and may be easier.Before touching your
/etc/fstabfile, make a copy of it. The resulting line added to/etc/fstabwill look roughly likeUUID=ABCD-1234 /windows vfat umask=0077,nofail 0 2, replacing the ABCD-1234 with the actual UUID and /windows with the actual desired mount point, if different. Runningmount -awith sudo is highly recommended after touching the fstab file to verify that everything is correct. The command should complete with no errors. If it does, revert your/etc/fstabto the copied version. Rebooting with a broken fstab file can leave your system unbootable.Finally, for systems like Linux Mint, run
update-grubwith sudo to rebuild the bootloader entries. With os-prober enabled in/etc/default/gruband the Windows EFI partition mounted if relevant,update-grubshould show a warning about os-prober being enabled and among other entries, an entry for Windows 10 should be present. As long as the Windows drive continues to be installed in the system, a boot entry should be available next to your Linux Mint and bios entry options in GRUB going forward.Grub can find the windows install on the secondary drive and give you the option to boot from it at startup.
That’s how I have it setup on my dual-boot laptop. Two 1GB hard drives with one dedicated to w11 & the other to Linux mint.
Other than W11 regular stability issues I haven’t had any issues with it.
1GB may not be enough and could prove challenging for a first time user, even with a minimal Linux install… Though I’m not an arch user myself so probably just a skill issue now that I think of it
Autocorrect strikes again.
Yeah, thought I’d make a stupid joke out of it. Figured we all knew what you meant anyway
I’m just leaving it there.
To be fair that was about the harddrive space of my first linux machine. I installed xunbuntu 6.10 on an old windows 98 machine. I then used it as a game server.
It was a wee bit laggy for some reason. Damn thing ran for another 4 years.