Planning on dual boot Linux & Windows, any thing I should know?

[DriedSponge]

Hi there,

I have been considering switching to dual booting Linux & Windows on my desktop. I was wondering if there is anything important I should know before going through with this. I plan on using full drives for each OS. Here is my planned setup:

• 2TB NVME SSD for windows (mostly because games take up so much space)
• 1TB SSD for Linux 
• 2TB HDD That can be shared between the two.

All of those drives above are connected via SATA with the NVME drive being the exception. My largest concern would be the shared HDD between the two. Will I still be able to access data on both operating systems without the need of reformatting? In addition, would I have to worry about windows screwing with my connected Linux SSD?

To provide more context, I planned on using either Fedora or Ubuntu with either KDE or LXQT. I am not new to Linux because I use it all the time when working with my home server, however this will be my first time using it in a desktop context. If you have another suggested distro for this type of setup, please let me know. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, DriedSponge said:

All of those drives above are connected via SATA with the NVME drive being the exception. My largest concern would be the shared HDD between the two. Will I still be able to access data on both operating systems without the need of reformatting? In addition, would I have to worry about windows screwing with my connected Linux SSD?

What filesystem is the drive? NTFS should be ok on linux and good on windows. ExFAT also works on both.

 

 

[DriedSponge]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

What filesystem is the drive? NTFS should be ok on linux and good on windows. ExFAT also works on both.

 

 

The HDD uses NTFS. I would prefer not to change it only because there's already a lot of files stored there that I would need to back up.

[C2dan88]

10 minutes ago, DriedSponge said:

In addition, would I have to worry about windows screwing with my connected Linux SSD?

Install windows first, then disconnect you windows drive while you install linux.

 

After reconnect your windows drive.  If you want to use grub bootloader for choosing which os to boot rather then booting bios. Then set linux drive as first boot device. Login to linux and update grub. 

 

Otherwise use bios choose which os to boot.

No need to worry about Windows messing with linux at all. Only when windows shares a drive with linux you will find the bootloader is overwritten. On seperate drive booth os is self contained

 

14 minutes ago, DriedSponge said:

2TB HDD That can be shared between the two.

Linux can read NTFS without a problem.

 

[DriedSponge]

1 minute ago, C2dan88 said:

Install windows first, then disconnect you windows drive while you install linux.

Thanks for the tips! What if I already have Windows installed?

[C2dan88]

Just now, DriedSponge said:

What if I already have Windows installed?

Still disconnect the drive, while you install linux. That way you can be safe you do not accidentally erase windows and more importantly both os has their own boot partition/loader.

[DriedSponge]

5 minutes ago, C2dan88 said:

Still disconnect the drive, while you install linux. That way you can be safe you do not accidentally erase windows and more importantly both os has their own boot partition/loader.

Good to know. I appreciate the advice. Thank you!

[The Hope]

To provide more context, I planned on using either Fedora or Ubuntu with either KDE or LXQT. I am not new to Linux because I use it all the time when working with my home server, however this will be my first time using it in a desktop context. If you have another suggested distro for this type of setup, please let me know. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

The thing with Ubuntu and Fedora is that, despite popular belief, these systems can have more bugs and problems than the operating systems below.

 

mageia -- https://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/
PCLinuxOS -- https://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=180
FreeBSD -- https://www.freebsd.org/
Alpine Linux -- https://www.alpinelinux.org/
ROSA Fresh Desktop -- https://rosa.ru/rosa-linux-download-links/
Gentoo -- https://www.gentoo.org/
OpenMandriva -- https://www.openmandriva.org
Clear Linux -- https://www.clearlinux.org/downloads.html
EndeavourOS -- https://endeavouros.com
OpenBSD -- https://www.openbsd.org/
ALT Linux -- https://en.altlinux.org/Regular
openSUSE -- https://www.opensuse.org
Void Linux -- https://voidlinux.org/download/
GhostBSD -- https://ghostbsd.org/
Artix Linux -- https://artixlinux.org/download.php

 

If you are perfectly happy with Ubuntu or Fedora then there is no point in using anything else.

However, if you belong to the numerous group of people who experience installation/configuration/performance/update/quality problems with Ubuntu and Fedora, this can be solved by testing the above systems.

Each distro has its own characteristics.