Dual Booting: Windows and Ubuntu

Man, brings back memories.

I haven't dual booted since running Windows XP & Windows 7.
 
I have been doing this for years, It's great, I have a drive for stuff that both can access with all my documents, films, music etc on and then I just pick one on boot depending how I feel or what I am doing. Sometimes I spend weeks in one or the other then just switch one day.

It wouldn't take much for me to abandon Windows altogether though, I just like Visual Studio and Warcraft and while Warcraft does work on Linux it isn't always stable. For everything else I use Ubuntu.
 
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My preference would be to use WSL2 or virtualize Linux. I spent a half a day Saturday installing CentOS into a VMWare Workstation Pro VM and installing all of the development tools I needed. My PC is fast enough that the the Linux VM runs almost as fast as if it were the host OS.
 
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It seems like an easier step would be to partition Windows during the installation process. There used to be a way to do this. Is partitioning a Windows drive no longer possible during the installation process?

I made a dual install for my laptop a while back on a laptop that came with Windows 7 already installed. I had upgraded to Windows 10, and since it was the home edition, I had no control over when it updated. I used to take the laptop out and sometimes use it on public WiFi, but it would update without my consent. I then decided to install openSuSE on it. I used a third party partition manager to repartition the Windows Drive, then installed openSuSE which uses Grub as the boot loader. Grub still saw Windows 7 as an active OS, so I had to tell Grub to ignore it. But once I did that, the boot loader still had openSuSE and Windows 10 as boot options.

If I could get openSuSE to hibernate properly on closing the laptop cover, I would just drop Windows altogether; however, for some reason, the hibernate on closing the cover feature for openSuSE does not work properly - it sleeps the PC instead.

Now, whenever I want to use public WiFi, I use openSuSE and rarely connect Windows to the internet even though I upgraded it to the Pro version.
 
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Good effort.

But for beginners I personally recommend either Linux Mint (Cinnamon or XFCE) or Manjaro (KDE). My experience is these offer much more smoother and easier transition for new users from windows.

Oh, and in case, to fix windows over-writes of grub:

User will manually need to do this at command prompt:

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi

If a user want to prevent windows from meddling with Grub:-
a) run in terminal: efibootmgr
sudo efibootmgr --bootnum #### --inactive
(where #### is partition/disk where windows is residing)
 
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Anyone tried a Dual Boot with Windows in a GPT disk and Linux in MBR with a option to boot either on switching on?
 
wiyosaya said:
It seems like an easier step would be to partition Windows during the installation process. There used to be a way to do this. Is partitioning a Windows drive no longer possible during the installation process?
Click to expand...

You can certainly do the disk partitioning at other times and in other ways. During Windows installation is definitely possible (you similarly have a choice when selecting where to install it), and you can also do it from Linux directly with a tool like gparted. If you already have Windows installed though (and have the right permissions on the machine), the suggested way with the Disk Manager is quite easy.
 
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I only use my home PC for playing computer games and maybe a bit of Netflix. So for me installing Linux makes no sense. Far less games work on Linux compared to Windows. My work laptop has to be windows as I connect via an AD and we have strict rules on what machines we use to connect to our DCN.

Im all for dumping windows for home machines. Which is why I use Apple for all things not gaming on a personal basis. But I just cant see Linux taking off. I find people in general find Windows easier to use, because thats what they have been exposed to 9 times out of 10.
 
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I agree with the commenter who mentioned WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). Run popular distros like Ubuntu in Windows without having to install VM application like VMWare Player/workstation, etc. just install from the MS store. You get GUI, audio, etc. Bonus - you don’t have to deliberate about partitioning too much or too little space, etc.
 
wiyosaya said:
It seems like an easier step would be to partition Windows during the installation process. There used to be a way to do this. Is partitioning a Windows drive no longer possible during the installation process?

I made a dual install for my laptop a while back on a laptop that came with Windows 7 already installed. I had upgraded to Windows 10, and since it was the home edition, I had no control over when it updated. I used to take the laptop out and sometimes use it on public WiFi, but it would update without my consent. I then decided to install openSuSE on it. I used a third party partition manager to repartition the Windows Drive, then installed openSuSE which uses Grub as the boot loader. Grub still saw Windows 7 as an active OS, so I had to tell Grub to ignore it. But once I did that, the boot loader still had openSuSE and Windows 10 as boot options.

If I could get openSuSE to hibernate properly on closing the laptop cover, I would just drop Windows altogether; however, for some reason, the hibernate on closing the cover feature for openSuSE does not work properly - it sleeps the PC instead.

Now, whenever I want to use public WiFi, I use openSuSE and rarely connect Windows to the internet even though I upgraded it to the Pro version.
Click to expand...
Install gnome-tweak-tool software from YAST. That will allow you to set the hibernate function on laptop close.
 
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If you have 2 GPU in your PC (I.e. you have a CPU with integrated GPU), it is actually better to just install Linux, and use KVM to virtualize Windows. You more or less do not loose gaming performance, and you can run everything without having to reboot to another OS.
 
Ben Myers said:
How about dual boot on separate drives? Lots cleaner.
Click to expand...

This is doable. However, while the installation might be easier, your rig would now be tied down to the multiple drives, since the MBR would point to a bootloader on two separate drives. Thus, if you remove one of the drives (or sometimes, if you add a new drive), grub might not be able to pull up and give you your OS choices as originally desired.

Effectively, you'd have to retroactively "fix" the MBR and bootloaders, and get grub to update its directory if that happens. So technically, there is nothing stopping you (and yes, it might be considered cleaner) - but probably not the ideal route for a beginner, nor would it be encouraged unless you are ready to start debugging master boot records and bootloaders.
 
Dual booting has many problems, and if you think you actually need it you're almost certainly wrong.

We have VMs, Docker, and WSL. There's almost nothing you can do on native Linux but can't on one of these. Maybe if you develop Linux kernel drivers, but in that case it's probably the other way around, I.e. you don't need a native Windows system.

Disclaimer: someone who's been supporting developers with their dual boot issues for almost a decade.

WSL is awesome. I just found out today it can even use Pageant from Windows:

github.com

GitHub - BlackReloaded/wsl2-ssh-pageant: bridge between windows pageant and wsl2

bridge between windows pageant and wsl2. Contribute to BlackReloaded/wsl2-ssh-pageant development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

Which solves pretty much all the remaining headaches I had with it. Been happily developing Linux Ansible playbooks on WSL for a couple of years now.
 
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I installed ubuntu version of Linux on my very old Dell/win95 and wow, it is nice. I played with it much and really enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone who has an old computer that they like to toy with.
 
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ma3mool said:
This is doable. However, while the installation might be easier, your rig would now be tied down to the multiple drives, since the MBR would point to a bootloader on two separate drives. Thus, if you remove one of the drives (or sometimes, if you add a new drive), grub might not be able to pull up and give you your OS choices as originally desired.

Effectively, you'd have to retroactively "fix" the MBR and bootloaders, and get grub to update its directory if that happens. So technically, there is nothing stopping you (and yes, it might be considered cleaner) - but probably not the ideal route for a beginner, nor would it be encouraged unless you are ready to start debugging master boot records and bootloaders.
Click to expand...
Not really. Especially if the drives are MBR.

If the Windows drive is removed, the startup screen will show Windows option, but will be invalid. Linux will boot as usual.
If the Linux drive is removed, one can boot Windows by manually selecting the boot drive (F9 in my Laptop, F11 in my desktop). There is nothing to "fix" as long as the change is temporary.

If the drive(s) are GPT, then of course, there will be a problem if the drive with the EFI boot managers are removed.
 
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axiomatic13 said:
I would think so.
Click to expand...
UPDATE - I looked at the titles of the available packages, and it does not look like there is anything similar - though I did not review package descriptions. Like I said, the setting to hibernate on laptop cover close is in KDE, but it does not function properly - at least on my hardware, anyway.
 
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I have dual-booted Linux and Win for years. The ONLY reason I keep Windows around is gaming. But Linux is really catching up. Dying Light 2 runs beautifully in Linux.
 
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DrSuess said:
My preference would be to use WSL2 or virtualize Linux. I spent a half a day Saturday installing CentOS into a VMWare Workstation Pro VM and installing all of the development tools I needed. My PC is fast enough that the the Linux VM runs almost as fast as if it were the host OS.
Click to expand...
Hyper v in windows pro is type 1 hypervisor. ít is much faster than type 2 such as vmware workstation.
You can make hyper v even faster by using the gen2 VM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor#Classification
 
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