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Looking for a distro to dual boot with Win 11 (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by ImminentOrbit@lemmy.world to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.ml

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I currently have a win 11 machine and would like to dual boot with Linux. Looking at some of the different options, it seems many aren't recommended for dual booting. Are there any that are?

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[–] janNatan@lemmy.ml 21 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The best way to dual boot is to have separate hard drives for Windows and Linux. I'm not aware of some distros bring more windows friendly than others.

[–] illi@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Can you plese elaborate on why? I was thinking of dipping my toes in with Linux but my plans were to have it on the one drive.

[–] imecth@fedia.io 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Supposedly Windows can mess with the linux bootloader if it's on the same drive, i never had it happen back when i still dual booted. Reinstalling the bootloader isn't too hard though if it ever does happen.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 months ago

Same, I dual booted for almost 10 years on 3 system machines and never once had it happen. But I've seen it reported before, so it's something to be aware of.

A mitigation is to have a Linux live USB to boot into to reinstall your bootloader (GRUB, systemd-boot, etc, depending on distro). I haven't heard of Windows actually destroying partitions or data, and perhaps it doesn't do it if your boot partition doesn't look like a Windows boot partition (e.g. it's a different filesystem), IDK. But learning to reinstall the bootloader from a live CD isn't that hard (usually just running one or two commands).

So, you'll probably be fine, just do a little research first if you're nervous.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 6 months ago

Is it possible people are just misremembering installing Windows second and mistaking it as a random Windows upgrade?

[–] dean36963@mastodon.social 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

@illi @janNatan if you boot from BIOS (sometimes called legacy boot in setup menu) rather than UEFI, you can only select which disk to boot from, and the disk had to store boot details at the beginning of disk (MBR): both OSes could end up fighting over it. Linux operating systems are often careful to warn about this, but windows just assume they are the only operating system on a PC and overwrite it. (From memory, might need some checking 🤣)

I've not had issues since dual booting with UEFI.

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I believe you are correct. I had my MBR overwritten a few times back in the Windows XP days, but haven't heard of it happening on modern UEFI setups outside of warnings like these.

I still segregate my system drives out of paranoia though.