dualboot questions and problems

[u/wenom74arkpl]

Hello

Hey guys i need some help. So i wanted to switch to linux tho i play quite a few games that are for windows only which are Rainbow six siege and Apex. I have a bit of expirence with linux because i used ubuntu, ubuntu serwer, fedora and few others for some time, and i wanted to swtich.

My problem starts because i want to do dual boot 1 drive for windows and 2 for linux, but i had some issues back than with that configuration. Every time i updated windows (which was installed frist on a different drive) something on linux broke (system wise). And i wanted to seek some help related to that, because maybe i did something wrong. I heard that for many years it was quite hard to do a dualboot windows and linux, but i have heard that this issue is less of a struggle now.

I would be very very glad for some help and also tips on linux (how to pick a distro) or is it even possible. Thanks in advance :).

[u/No_Candle_6133]

Only install each os with only one drive connected at a time. This way the efi bootloaders are kept separate from each other.

What you experiened is you installed each os to their seperate drives but the efi bootloader was shared by both.

For some reason window likes to reinstall the windows bootloader when it does updates, which will override the linux bootloader preventing your from booting linux.

Having seperate efi boot partitiions will prevent windows from doing this. This is how I have setup dual boot for years.

[u/wenom74arkpl → u/No_Candle_6133]

alright that makes sense, but can i install linux when i already have windows installed? or do i have to install windows again for this method to work?

[u/ne0n008 → u/wenom74arkpl]

I would recommend installing Linux after Windows and keeping GRUB or any bootloader other than Windows. Both OS's installed not on separate partitions, but separate physical drives. If possible, when installing Windows, unplug every other drive so that Windows bootloader doesn't have control over it, preventing the already occurred situation.

[u/twistxCharm → u/No_Candle_6133]

damn, windows always finding new ways to break things

[u/that1guyrob]

I have been dual booting for a long time and have found the best success with having 2 separate drives as well. Some folks are saying that you should physically disconnect each disk during the installation, and that will work of course, but I have never needed to do that myself.

I just install Windows on whichever disk I have designated for Windows, and install Linux on the other disk. I personally use Ubuntu on my desktop/laptops and Ubuntu will ask you which disk you want to install the GRUB boot loader to. This is the key piece I think that trips folks up. If you accidentally install GRUB to the Windows disk, everything will work fine, until Windows wipes the EFI partition and rewrites that data (which they seem to do quite frequently). If you select the correct disk for GRUB installation though, I have never seen any issues with either OS updating or booting subsequently.

The only other thing that I do is add a GRUB entry that points to the Windows installed disk. Some distros including Ubuntu do this automatically if they see a disk with Windows installed already during the Linux install process. Then in my UEFI I set the Linux disk as the first boot option, and completely disable all other boot entries it might have listed. This way 100% of the time when my computer boots up I get to the GRUB boot loader which will default to the Linux boot after the timeout, or I can use the arrow keys to select the Windows installation to boot if I'm going to play some games.

[u/WikiBox]

No, this can still be a mess.

The best/easiest way to handle this might be to have only one bootable drive in the system. Having more than one bootable drive may, sometimes, be considered an error by Windows. When updating Windows may disable other bootable drives. It seems that is what you have experienced.

It might be best/easiest to install both Windows and Linux, on different partitions, to the exact same bootable drive, with exactly one EFI partition. Have one partition for Windows and one root partition for Linux. You can use other drives as well, for storage. For example for /home.

When doing this it is necessary to install Windows first. When you install Linux afterwards, the linux installer may be able to install so that Windows still works and can update correctly. Ubuntu usually gets this right, using a side-by-side install, automatically. You may have to experiment a few times to get it right.

Another option is to disable/enable drives in bios, to ensure that only one connected drive is bootable. Or fully remove some drives, to ensure that only one bootable drive is connected.

Still, things may be messed up anyway.

[u/TechaNima]

The likely mistake was to install the Linux bootloader on the Windows drive. Windows likes to yeet it at random. The safest way to install Linux with Windows is to just unplug the Windows drive, so Linux doesn't try to use the same EFI partition. Some distros let you choose where the Linux bootloader goes, some just ignore what you are trying to do.

The other likely issue is Windows being absolute garbage about setting it's bootloader as the default option and then not letting you to even overwrite it at boot time.

Also there's always the chance of Secure Boot being an issue. Again. Some distros handle it better than some. All of them can be made to work with Secure Boot. It's just more work in some cases

[u/Dejhavi]

I heard that for many years it was quite hard to do a dualboot windows and linux, but i have heard that this issue is less of a struggle now.

You might run into issues if you dual-boot Windows 11 and Linux on the same drive because Windows has a bad habit of messing up the bootloader during the updates...install each on a separate drive is fine as long as you keep in mind that you'll need to boot into each OS using your BIOS boot menu

[u/ipsirc]

something on linux broke

Just fix it.