Bad post, contains anime
I have to use Windows for work, so this is how I got it setup and MS still makes it difficult with updates lol.
- install windows
- adjust main partition so you have space for Linux
- install linux, during install create anither efi partition, and root partition.
- linux probes foreign OS (some distros might not) and creates a chainloader entry from your new EFI to Windows EFI
- set BIOS to boot from linux EFI
Windows never knows the other partition exists and leaves it intact.
Could you give me more detail for step 3?
Yes. When you install Linux it will auto detect the Windows EFI partition and put boot stuff there by default, but then windows comes along and will randomly trash that setup. So during install don’t go with the suggested option, instead use the partitioning tool to creat another small EFI boot partition elswhere on disk, leaving Windows EFI and OS paetitions as is. Also create your root and home partition(s). Install to those partitions, then Linux should prompt for Probe Foreign OS and add a chainloader entry to your grub menu. This entry, when selected, points grub to windows EFI partition ID and hands off the boot process to Windows. Windows is unaware it has been chainloaded. As long as you set BIOS to load directly from the LINUX EFI entry then you will boot to Grub with Linux/Windows Dual option…But technically it is not a true Dual Boot, it is a sequential boot I guess. I have had this for 7 years on same install and boot between W10 and Linux daily. Windows has never touched my Linux EFI.
How to add chainloader entry to grub?
Don’t even have to do that. Install windows first, then install Linux with refind bootloader on preferably a separate disk. Done
You do need a separate EFI, even though linux finds EFI, otherwise windows update trashes it randomly and why the meme we see here exists, with separate EFI windows doesn’t know about it. You can shutdown windows mid update and boot linux, then reboot back to windows and update will continue. Siloed System
That’s literally what I did yesterday with my method. It works, Windows has never trashed it
It will, thats why that meme exists.
Not during typically reboots, but when some windows update or autofile repair happens it thinks it is the only OS on that partition and does what it likes.
Nope, ran it like this for over 5 years. Definitely rebooted during updates / did some crap
Then you have been lucky, because most peoples experience with grub EFI on Windows partition is windows will eventually scrub it.
I installed arch so that didn’t happen.
Did exactly that.
I have an old, spinning rust WinBlows, easily inserted in the ex-cdrom slot of my bathtub movie lenovo t440p, because once a year or so I need to upgrade the firmware of some crap that has no other option. Wastes about 24 hrs of (annoying but small) power updating each time. May this pass, in time. (like tears in rain :)
I should get around to imaging it onto a SSD, but I don’t, due to distaste, and then I need it again. :(.
Easy solution if you only have one SSD: instead of installing Windows as your second OS, install a different Linux distro.
And while you’re at it, install a third distro
Why stop there?
just leave a grub floppy in the machine and boot from there, you won’t even notice.
This hit me hard. I remember doing something like this 😅
Me too. I remember putting a PXE loader on a floppy… and it being the best idea in that mess of a plan that I’ve had…
Do you happen to know where it’s from?
Zombieland Saga.
Zombie girls are brought together to make an idol group by a sadistic madman who abuses the shit out of them.
Sounds appropriate…
I remember seeing the intro back when it came out. I wonder if I would like it. This kind of humor does make it seem good.
Two ssds is when you need to run stuff on windows that requires the bare metal.
Windows needs to be contained, controlled and told who is the boss, I suggest using Tiny11 or MicroXP in a VM for stuff that can’t run in wine.
MicroXP!? What year is it!?
Firefox stopped supporting XP in 2018 so it’s not too long ago that it was still usable.
6 years was “not too long ago”, eh? Right this way grandpa, let’s get you back to your rocking chair
Okay it’s long for people where it’s 6 years ago they learned to tie their shoes.
Gramps here still thinks LOTR is a recent movie.
I’ve been in tech since 2003 in some form or another, I’m right there with you in thinking XP feels recent. My daughter was 2 in 2018, so it’s definitely felt super quick to me too.
ok so technically, the 2018 support was post wannacry? I want to say. I dont believe they totally supported it up until quite a few years prior to that.
I was struggling to find the newest XP related news to prove my point, it was the best I could do.
By 2018 XP had been replaced by Windows 7 for several years.
Micro xp… I got that to run on a Intel 400mhz laptop with 32mb of mainboard soldered sdram chips. Nothing like a a operating system under 200mb installed with a GUI.
I’m using EFISTUB instead of a boot loader (on the PC running Arch, anyway) and Windows hasn’t figured out how to break that, yet.
Somehow it hasn’t figured out how to ruin my systemd-boot bootloader on EFI, (NixOS, this time) either. Perhaps it just has better support for EFI than BIOS?
At least 2 SSD is a 100% safe protection.
If only …
That’s what I use? Am I in the clear?
That’s what I’m doing too, running fine but when I reinstall windows for whatever reason (mainly for it being slow and buggy) I disconnect linux drive because one time it broke my grub by messing with efi partition (nothing unrepairable but annoying at least)
Don’t use windows
Unfortunately, Linux can’t run everything *yet. What do you propose people do instead when they can’t access the apps they need to play with friends or work?
Embrace freedom, change the habits, eat the rich!! /s
VM, I run Virtualbox in full screen on a second monitor for my work stuff. Works great.
Vms work fine for WINDOWS ONLY apps, along with with
Ugh, that’s so annoying. Every time windows updates i have to open the BIOS and put ubuntu first on the boot order so it doesn’t skip grub.
I Also have a drive that i can access on both linux and Windows and every so often Windows will make it inaccessible on Linux because it didn’t fully unmount the drive.
It’s crazy that the OS has access to the BIOS in a R/W mode at all. Gaping security hole.
Secure boot Linux bootloader Kernel update
It’s at least gotten a bit better.
There was a time when Photoshop and other programs used a copy-protection scheme that overwrote parts of grub, causing the user not to be able to boot Linux or Windows.
They knew about it, and just DGAF. I don’t remember their exact FAQ response, but it was something along the lines of “Photoshop is incompatible with GRUB. Don’t dual boot if you use Photoshop.”
Grub still has code for BIOS based installs that uses reed-solomon error correction at boot time to allow grub to continue to function even if parts of its core.img were clobbered by shitty copy protection schemes for Windows software.
I have a real simple solution that involves not windows
