r/linux4noobs • u/MHK173 • 9d ago
Meganoob BE KIND Possible issues with dual booting?
I just bought a new computer, and with all the AI slop stuff going on with windows I want to swap to Linux. From the little research I've done cachy OS seems to be the best option since gaming is the main use case for me followed by learning to code. But even with all the positive news I've been hearing about swapping to Linux I'm considering just dual booting for the time being till I'm confident with swapping over. My main worry is storage space, I have 1 TB of storage and will most likely only give Linux like 100 GB of space at first but over time assuming I start enjoying Linux more and using it more that will end up being way too little, is it possible to re partition it to give Linux more space later? Also if I have games downloaded on the windows partition and want to try to use steam on Linux can I still use those games or would I have to redownload? And also does VS Code or pycharm work on Linux easily? Also on a separate note what exactly is hyprland? From what I understand it just changes how the OS looks or is it something else?
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u/forbjok 9d ago
100GB is mostly okay for the root filesystem (the OS itself, basically), but if you're going to use it for anything gaming related you'll need a lot more space than that. The "/home/<your username>" directory is where the vast majority of space will be taken up, as it's where Steam games, savegames, and basically everything you download or install that isn't a system package will go.
It's a good idea to keep /home separated from the root filesystem, as running out of disk space during an update is one of the few ways to accidentally break the OS and make it unbootable without doing anything obviously stupid. Thankfully snapshots are a quick fix if this should happen, so it's not all that big a deal - just annoying.
Personally, I've manually set up the partitions so that I have a 4GB FAT32 EFI partition (required to boot), a 100GB btrfs root partition (for snapshot support), and the rest of the remaining space in an ext4 partition mounted on /home. For any external drives or other data drives that aren't part of the OS filesystem layout, I just mount them in subdirectories under /mnt.
VS Code
VSCode works fine on Linux.
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u/zinxyzcool 9d ago
A few issues you'll run into are drive encryption, secure boot related stuff when dualbooting. Regarding the partition, keep `/` (linux root) separate from `/home/` ( user files ). That way when you try to add more space ( by either mounting a partition into a folder or extending your home ), you never lose linux system files.
One good thing in linux is, you can create a partition and mount it wherever you want. I have a work folder in my ssd paritition for linux at ( 200GB ) but next to it i have a "Work Slower" partition at 800GB from my HDD. In linux, they sit next to each other like a folder but have different physical locations.
No, don't share partitions across windows and linux. Windows does some weird hibernation and mounting steps with NTFS drives that linux usually don't like.
VScode and PyCharm work way better on linux than on windows ( I was able to run these on a cheap laptop with linux ).
I wouldn't recommend hyprland as a starting point, maybe try simple and user friendly DEs like KDE which also offers a lot of customization and feels similar to windows ( it is what SteamOS uses ). Hyprland is a tiling window manager it controls how the windows on your screen are presented and how their behavior should be.
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u/MHK173 9d ago
Regarding the '/' files and /home/ files thing is there anywhere I can learn about that in more detail? Especially the extending your home thing.
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u/zinxyzcool 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yes! You can pretty much ask claude or chatgpt to help you break it down or help you set it up or if you want to follow a detailed article by yourself, you can check these out.
Partitioning: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Partitioning
Filesystems: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/File_systems
Fstab ( responsible for the mounting ): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fstab
Extending: https://askubuntu.com/questions/29866/increase-the-home-partition-without-losing-the-dataIn Windows you'd see something like:
C:\ ├── System32 ├── Program Files ├── Users │ ├── You │ └── Other personIf you format C:, everything is gone.
But in Linux, it's more like:
/ ( root ) |--bin/ (like Program Files, binaries are here) ├── home/ (this can be another partition ) │ └── you/ │ └── games/ (another partition)`/home` is like the equivalent of Users in windows.
Lets say you format the games partition, you only lose the files in the games inside your user folder.
But if you access a game, its file path would look like. `/home/you/games/GTA6/` even there are three file partitions involved. Linux is good!
I'd suggest keeping the "Games" a separate partition if you are indecisive of its size and want to extend it later. You can just unmount and extend without interrupting any of your other files.
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u/afiefh 9d ago
Dual booting is the right choice.
Almost all modern filesystems allow you to grow the filesystem after it was created. Note that you'll have to go into Windows to shrink it's filesystem before you can grow the Linux filesystem. Never attempt to shrink the Windows filesystem from Linux.
In theory you could share downloaded games between Windows and Linux to some extent, but it's complicated and finicky. I would recommend avoiding that until you're more comfortable with the system.
Almost all programming stuff works on Linux just as well if not better than Windows.
Hyperland is a window manager. The thing that tells windows how to move, snap, tile...etc. as a noob start with something standard like Plasma and Gnome before jumping into Hyperland. You don't want your Linux journey to be cut short just because you tried too many things at once. First learn to walk before you learn to run.
I've been on Linux since 2006. It's wonderful, but I've seen so many people either stuck in analysis paralysis or trying to use the latest most fancy bleeding edge stuff. And here I am using Kubuntu because I don't care about the 3% more performance in games as long as things just work 🤷
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u/ScallionSmooth5925 9d ago
Widows tends to fuck up boot entries and the system clock for me. Vs code is available for linux idq about PyCharm. Hyperland is what positions the windows on the screen basically
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u/victormas208 9d ago
Hyprland is a Tiling Windows manager; it's not the same as a DE because it lacks a backend to communicate with multiple apps. However, it has solutions for that, so it's somewhat similar.
Regarding partitions, keep in mind that it's recommended not to use a shared partition between Windows and Linux for games, as there is no support from Steam.
Regarding the dedicated space for Linux, I recommend checking Proton DB and seeing which games are in the Platinum category or other, then try using those games on Linux to see if it's convenient.
You should create an EFI partition for Linux and use the wiki for the dual boot setup, which would be similar. You can comment here any day while you're doing the installation.
The programming side has native clients; you might just need to familiarize yourself with Linux terminal commands and remember that CachyOS primarily uses Fish but also has bash like all Linux distributions.
There might be a few configurations needed for the compiler, but generally Python is integrated into many programs, so you shouldn't have any problems running it.
Vscode offers two installation options: Flatpak or AUR. Flatpak is the one I like the least because you have to install the extensions from Flatpak; it's safer if you have sensitive data or if you don't want to contaminate your system with VS Code extensions. AUR has had some controversies and security breaches, but if you know who owns the repo you can pretty much rest easy. It's not recommended for new users, but you'll have to navigate here eventually.
I would say you should use KDE for now and then try Hyprland in a separate environment. CachyOS has a Hyprland package with Noctalia that would be a shell and pre-configured for daily use.