OS hotswap?

[TimeWastr]

Ive recently upgraded from a laptop to a full desktop pc, and ive come to a roadblock. not hardware/boot wise thats fine working well. but does anyone know a way to "hotswap" or immediately boot into a different os with a restart, Windows -> Linux, Linux -> Windows. this will pretty much just make it so i dont have to, restart > boot to bios > swap boot drive priority > restart, just to test to see if a program will cooperate on both linux and windows 'relatively' bug free. Anything helps!

PC Specs - 

Mobo - TUF H570-Pro

Cpu - I7-11700KF

Cpu Cooler - Be Quiet! Pure Loop 240mm

Gpu - TUF RTX 3080

Ram - 16Gb x 2 Corsair Vengence 3600Mhz

Network Card - Asus PCE-AC88

Boot Drives - 1Tb 980 Pro m.2 (Windows) - 500Gb 980 Pro m.2 (Linux)

Storage - 2Tb 7200rpm barracuda HDD, 1Tb WD Blue 7200rpm HDD

Psu - Seasonic Focus 850w 80 plus gold

 

[Coltinator]

You could use the boot menu. According to a google search the Asus TUF boot menu key is F8. So hit F8 instead of your BIOS key (F2?). It'll give you a list of bootable drives and you just choose whichever you want.

 

Edit:

This does not change the boot order. It just boots into the drive you choose once and then the priority drive next restart.

[BobVonBob]

I'm surprised you don't already have this capability. What Linux distro do you have installed? Most come with something like GRUB, a bootloader that allows you to boot into any installed operating system when the computer starts. Personally I would suggest installing one, and for what it's worth I'm partial to rEFInd. It requires installing GRUB anyway, but provides a nicer interface imo.

[TimeWastr]

18 hours ago, BobVonBob said:

I'm surprised you don't already have this capability. What Linux distro do you have installed? Most come with something like GRUB, a bootloader that allows you to boot into any installed operating system when the computer starts. Personally I would suggest installing one, and for what it's worth I'm partial to rEFInd. It requires installing GRUB anyway, but provides a nicer interface imo.

im using ubuntu lts, im aware of grub and its capabilities as thats what im booting to but i was wondering if anyone knows about a faster way of doing it possibly bypassing having to go through grub to boot into windows

 

[BobVonBob]

18 hours ago, TimeWastr said:

im using ubuntu lts, im aware of grub and its capabilities as thats what im booting to but i was wondering if anyone knows about a faster way of doing it possibly bypassing having to go through grub to boot into windows

 

You can modify the GRUB timeout to 0 seconds, but then you can't access GRUB at all to switch operating systems. The best option with GRUB would be to set the timeout to 1 second, then you minimize the time it takes to boot and you still have an opportunity to change the OS.

 

A better option would be to look at other boot managers with more functionality. For instance, rEFInd that I mentioned before allows setting the timeout to -1 to immediately boot the default option, but if you're holding a key while booting it will open the menu, and if you hold a shortcut key for an OS (e.g. "W" for Windows, "L" for Linux/Ubuntu) it will boot that OS instead.