I’ve been happily Windows-free for about 5 years, but lately I need some Win-only software including a few games that don’t work at all on Linux. My main questions:
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How to avoid Windows messing with my Linux install? Having a separate PC is not possible for me right now. I’m considering uninstalling grub and instead selecting the boot device I want from UEFI, idk if this is advisable though.
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I’m also interested in how to get a Windows install that’s as minimal as possible: I don’t want to log in to a Microsoft account, I don’t want telemetry etc, I only want whatever is strictly required to make my system functional. The one thing I do want is Windows Defender cause ain’t no way I’m dealing with an antivirus.
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Should I go for Win 11 or stick to 10?
Any tips or experiences are welcome!
Ps: I know this information is probably all out there, but I thought a post in this community about it would be useful for others as well.
UPDATE: I ended up going with a regular old dual boot using Windows 10 iot LTSC - there’s a few games I wanted to run and a driver as well so I chose to install directly on hardware as opposed to a VM. I created the install media using Ventoy, and UNPLUGGED EVERY OTHER DRIVE during installation except the one Windows was supposed to come on. Afterwards I had to boot in with a live Linux USB (the nice thing about Ventoy is that you can write multiple ISOs to your USB so it came in handy) to manually install rEFInd onto the original EFI partition that my Linux install uses, then I just had to set up the correct boot order in UEFI and everything is working. I also had to fuck around on the boot partition and with efibootmgr to remove all traces of grub so things don’t get tangled up which was a bit scary but things are working perfectly now.
Two physical drives. Install windows first in one, then Linux on the other. If you don’t do this order windows boot manager will take over and you’ll have to boot Linux from bios.
I’m not using dual boot anymore, but when I did, I always selected the partition from BIOS, which was totally fine for me. Are there arguments against it?
Only an issue if you don’t disable fast shutdown on Windows. A hibernated system might get surprised if another OS moves files about while it was asleep.
Windows is never going to like an NTFS that has been touched by another OS even if it windows was completely shutdown during that time. Reading the NTFS partition might be okay. But, last I checked none of the Linux drivers could write without windows noticing and fouling things up. If that has changed it would be welcome news to me despite my warning use of windows.
If windows (and to a lesser extent that other OS) came bundled with some ability to mount, read, and write filesystems popular with other operating systems this wouldn’t be such a problem. One shouldn’t have to involve the network stack or 3rd party drivers just to share a partition on the same hardware or a portable drive with a modern file system.
Will it maybe work if I just unplug my Linux drive during the Win install?
I’d recommend having the Linux drive unplugged during the windows installation. Windows, for some reason, will install the boot loader in an entirely different drive than what you selected. There’s no question or prompt to prevent this. The only way to easily prevent this is to just have the one drive plugged in.
Yeah, I had to disconnect all my SATA HDs to stop the Windows installer from shitting all over them.
I’d be worried about Windows updates doing the same thing now, after the the recent glitch that broke bootloaders.
One problem with that is that you will end up with two EFI partitions. This is not supported very well by anything, really, so you will run the risk of Windows messing with the wrong partition anyway.
My aproach was to use two drives. I had Windows on the first, then disconected it and installed Linux on the second. That way I dont have grub and use F11 to open the bios bootloader to select the system I want.
My first line of investigation here would be virtualization. It will solve the “don’t mess with my Linux install” problem and will let you use the windows apps you need at the same time as the Linux apps you normally use. Also VMs have all their other useful features like snapshots and portability.
I did this in the distant past and it was quite convenient having the VM instead of a dual boot.
@friend_of_satan @recarsion yes, I’ve been using Windows 11 as a guest OS in VirtualBox for two months, after I switched to Linux as my main OS. I like it much more than dual booting.
Good thinking, I’ll definitely look into that. One caveat is I’m going to need a driver that’s also Win-only so I’ll have to see if that works in a VM.
Fanatec racing wheel and pedals - although this one technically works on Linux as well through hid-fanatecff which is what I’m currently using but the official ones would be better
I like rEFInd
If I have a new PC with a blank hard drive, what should be the install order?
Windows, then rEFInd, then Linux?
One thing I’ve been trying lately that’s a bit different: I happen to have an old SSD that had an enclosure with it (kind of like this) which essentially turns it into an external USB drive.
I then used Rufus to install Windows on that drive, using the “Windows To Go” option and also checking the option to not allow Windows to access the internal drives. That way, my laptop can just happily run Linux by itself, and if I need to use Windows for anything I can just plug the drive in, hit F12 on boot and choose to boot from that drive instead. The added bonus is that Windows also can’t mess with anything on my regular system or monkey about with the boot loader.
I’ve only had it on there for about a week but it seems to be working perfectly fine so far!
Oh and also Rufus gives you the option to start with a local account already set up, so you don’t have to do the MS online account bullshit. And then after install I used ShutUp10 to turn off as much telemetry as I could.
