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How reliable dual booting has been for you? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I currently have 2 PCs which dual-boot from single drive:

W10+Garuda on UEFI
W10+Pop OS on previously CSM, now migrated to UEFI

I have used dual boot for 2 years and Windows never decided to play the boss and override Linux. In fact, some Linux distros overwrote existing bootloader and put their own in my experience. I didn't have many problems and if I did, they were easy to fix. I even play Steam games from NTFS on both PCs. On the contrary, I heard many horror stories, dual booting is avoided and not recommended to newcomers by most users. How is your experience with dual booting Linux and Windows? Did Windows ever deleted Linux bootloader on updates for you?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I've found that the only way to dual boot reliably is to have windows installed on a separate, dedicated drive, and to keep all drives used by Linux air-gapped from the windows drive. Fast start and hibernate must also be disabled within windows to prevent it from putting hardware in an undefined state.

That being said, I haven't actually found any regular use for the windows install in years. mostly just keep it around as a sort of backup failsafe, or just in case there is a game that refuses to work in Linux. 99 times out of 100 it simply just collects dust.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I kept Windows "just in case" because it had some sort of fake activated MS Office which I would lose access to if I uninstalled Windows, along with iTunes. I also used an exam website that claimed it wouldn't work on anything but Windows & Chrome and Mac users would somehow always have problems so I couldn't take the risk. Guess what, it is just fine on Firefox. (right next to a Windows VM, y'know, just in case) Now I see I could have chosen clean install in the installer and live on.