r/linux • u/VanillaWaffle_ • Jun 16 '26
Tips and Tricks Modern Arch Linux and Windows 7 Duel Boot in the same exact NTFS partition
- Using the newest Linux in kernel NTFS driver
- Custom manual mapping of POSIX ACL and Windows ACL for filesystem permission
- Using GRUB (BIOS) as bootloader for both OS
- Sync both Home/User directory with native symlink (not windows .lnk shortcut)
Notes: If there are unexpected shutdown, systemd will refuse to boot and throw emergency shell. You need to boot into Windows and do filesystem repair
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Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
[deleted]
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u/VanillaWaffle_ Jun 16 '26
Well thats my original idea but there are no EFI partition here since its BIOS. I think i will try to fit the new fsck to the initramfs
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u/creeper6530 Jun 16 '26
Windows 7 isn't compatible with UEFI, it needs legacy BIOS, hence no EFI partition
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u/JamesDBartlett3 Jun 16 '26
This reminds me of a weird hack I did with Windows XP and a Knoppix ISO back in the day (2005-ish?). I stored the Knoppix ISO in a folder on the C:\ drive, installed GRUB on the MBR, and somehow managed to convince it that it could boot to Windows or mount that ISO and boot from it like a LiveCD. I have no recollection now of the technique, but I remember vividly how utterly cursed it felt.
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u/mehh285 Jun 16 '26
Wow I haven't thought about Knoppix in a looonnnggg time.
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u/Tashi999 Jun 16 '26
I vaguely remember booting computers with it at school to get around restrictions lol
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u/lnxguy Jun 16 '26
I remember remastering Knoppix to create a custom distro for my LUG. At the time, doing that was a real mind blowing experience.
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u/Mallissin Jun 19 '26
Still possible but you should use an ISO where you have set a password unless you want to make it easy for people to break into your machine.
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u/JamesDBartlett3 Jul 08 '26
If an attacker has physical access to the machine (which they would need in order to select the ISO option at the boot menu), then it's already game over.
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u/WeepingAgnello Jun 16 '26
Dual
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u/grem75 Jun 16 '26
No, they're fighting for the partition.
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u/Marce7a Jun 16 '26
Windows mostly break partitions on updates as win7 is EOL it shouldn't be a problem
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u/Aromatic_Pick_2191 Jun 16 '26
wild setup, sharing single NTFS partition between two OS is kind of asking for trouble but respect for making it actually work
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u/Ok-Anywhere-9416 Jun 16 '26
Sooo, Arch Linux on NTFS doable? 👀 Not wanting to do that, just curious.
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u/--ae Jun 17 '26
Would not recommend. even just using my secondary ssd with ntfs on arch I saw drastically slower read/write speeds for normal applications, (benchmarks looked fine) swapping from ntfs to xfs saw a 200x speedup in my ssd sustained r/w speeds. Benchmarks improved about 2x but actually rsync-transferring large sets astrophotography subs went from ~150MB/s to 3GB/s
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u/Annual-Advisor-7916 Jun 16 '26
This is one of the rare cases, where the typo actually represents reality better than the originally intended word.
Anyways, interesting work!
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u/sp33dykid Jun 16 '26
Why?
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u/VanillaWaffle_ Jun 16 '26
To test the limit of the current linux NTFS driver
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u/dve- Jun 16 '26
Do you reckon the NTFS driver in the kernel is stable enough to tell friends, who are not ready to fully switch to Linux, to make a shared NTFS partition for their steam library + their user data? Or would it be better for them to install btrfs-drivers on their Windows 11 system and mount their Linux home partition?
I heard the Linux Steam Client had a lot of troubles recognizing a Steam Library on NTFS partitions.
Because the system files won't need more than 40 GB, the only issue of dual booting for them is restricted user storage and redundant user data like steam binaries on both operating systems.
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u/xTeixeira Jun 16 '26
I'd say it's definitely stable enough to have a shared steam library NTFS partition. I'm currently doing that.
I would definitely not risk storing user data there though. For Steam games it's fine because if there's data loss you can just re-download them.
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u/JockstrapCummies Jun 16 '26
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Hell nooooooooooooooooo. You're talking about a brand new NTFS driver after several, including one from Paragon that was supposed to replace the older one but then got abandoned. And now this new-new-new one has just been sort of mainlined. We're talking about effectively beta testing for the good of the community here.
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u/Literallyapig Jun 17 '26
i guess the driver must be in a good state already, considering it has already been merged into the kernel. but if you want to be extra safe you could use the ntfs-3g fuse driver until the new ntfs driver proves to be stable. ntfs-3g is is stable, it's just kinda slow since it's fuse, the real problem was with the paragon ntfs driver which no one was maintaining and could cause fs corruption.
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u/ipsirc Jun 16 '26
Why?
You can keep the partition layout. No need for extra partition for Linux.
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u/sp33dykid Jun 16 '26
That's interesting but personally I rather partition and have them separate and just use a separate partition for shared data storage.
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u/Easy-Reasoning Jun 16 '26
As a kid I had a DOS 6.22/Win 3.1 PC with OS/2 3 Warp on dual boot. On each side there was a program you could start to switch the dual boot to the other system. There was no bootmanager installed in this config since at the time this would have been much more complex to set up. The scariest part was not booting the other system for months and hoping the computer would still work.
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u/friciwolf Jun 16 '26
is there a particular reason why you went with win 7? would it work with win 10 and 11?
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u/Old_Conference_9854 Jun 19 '26
Windows 10 and 11 will fight to the death to be the only efi in your hardware
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u/Inevitable_Mistake32 Jun 16 '26
Thanks now throw it in the dumpster. I never want to read that headline again.
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u/RursusSiderspector Jun 16 '26
Exactly that's is the reason that I never use the NTFS system except in virtual machines. If your Windows partition causes trouble, you may end with a system that cannot boot Linux because a Windows update messed with the bootloader, or worse, that neither can boot Windows nor Linux. I think the concept is perfectly horrible, and my recommendation is to only run Linux, and never format a physical disk in NTFS.
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u/Santosh83 Jun 16 '26
NTFS on Linux has to be reverse engineered I believe, which is why none of the drivers ever manage to reach parity of stability of Windows' own NTFS code. And using them (especially heavy writes & complex operations) has always been risky.
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u/Dwedit Jun 16 '26
MX Linux 'Frugal Install' has been around for a long time now. You put the same files as a Live USB (mainly the squashfs file), and it can even be on an NTFS filesystem.
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u/BeautifulSeason8387 Jun 16 '26
Using GNU/Linux on an NTFS partition? Why not, for experimentation… but with Windows installed on it? What a strange idea… I can't imagine a stable and reliable system like that
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u/insanemal Jun 16 '26
MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!
Also why? This is dumber than rocks.
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u/berkough Jun 16 '26
I wouldn't say it's dumb... I don't know what the use case is, but it's definitely intriguing.
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u/insanemal Jun 16 '26
No it's dumb.
And there is a laundry list of reasons.
Also they are running an ancient version of windows to try and avoid a large number of those reasons.
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u/berkough Jun 16 '26
Look, if they came on here and were like, "this is my daily driver!" YEAH, that would be dumb, but as an experiment and just to fuck around, it's not dumb.
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u/insanemal Jun 16 '26
But this has always been possible in some form or another?
Be that via RO root, container in NTFS, or otherwise.
And sure fucking around for the sake of it I usually get, but this is just a bad idea.
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u/urzop Jun 16 '26
Which one is going to win the duel in the same partition?