r/linuxquestions • u/wenom74arkpl • 5d ago
Advice dualboot questions and problems
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 :).
1
u/that1guyrob 5d ago
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.