I'm new to Linux and would like to dual boot with Windows 10

[DigitalDoofus]

Hi everyone, I've recently wondered about trying out Linux but don't have a lot of prior experience the closest I've really come to Linux was setting up a basic server on raspberry PI along time ago, I am choosing to use a KDE based manjaro distro for my initial introduction into Linux but I don't want to replace my windows install just in case I'm in other my head and need my windows install back, I tried to dual boot with Linux mint before and I messed it up so the Initial boot menu didn't offer anything so I basically bricked my PC (Noob mistake), One thing that I would really like to do is run both at the same time allowing me to live swap between Linux and windows I have a memory of someone showing me a mac running windows that could swap between mac os and windows on the fly, Is this possible with Linux manjaro and windows 10? I have 8GB of ram and an 8 Core at my disposal for this, If not whats the best boot loader that isn't gonna brick my PC.

 

Another thing I have an SSD and an unused 2TB HDD in my PC and I've heard that windows and Linux can cause conflicts when present on the same DISK, Is there any truth to this or is this just a myth?

Thanks for any input in advance ~LazyChaz 

[SCHISCHKA]

5 minutes ago, LazyChaz said:

allowing me to live swap

try run linux in a virtual machine

6 minutes ago, LazyChaz said:

I have a memory of someone showing me a mac running windows that could swap between mac os and windows on the fly

sounds like it was running in a virtual machine.

 

[paddy-stone]

The Liveswap you mentioned, would most likely be linux running in a VM. TBH if you're going that way I would suggest ding that too, it's very easy and that way you aren't messing with any boot options at all.

[DigitalDoofus]

2 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

try run linux in a virtual machine

sounds like it was running in a virtual machine.

 

1 minute ago, paddy-stone said:

The Liveswap you mentioned, would most likely be linux running in a VM. TBH if you're going that way I would suggest ding that too, it's very easy and that way you aren't messing with any boot options at all.

I have used virtual machines in the past but I would rather have Linux running directly at the hardware level as I'm planning to try and get used to Linux with a week of straight use and not using windows at all. anyways thank for the input 

 

[suicidalfranco]

here's a good tutorial on how to preperly setup a dual boot system

 

if you use the 2TB HDD for media storage, as long as you keep it NTFS, you will bw able ro see it on both OSs, if you format it to e

ext4, only manjoro will be able to see it. The other solution would be to also partition this drive and have a media partition in ntfs for windows and a ext4 partition for manjaro

 

the liveswitch your friend showed you was probably a VM, probably parallel desktop

 

if that what you want you can setup a VM on windows for manjaro

 

[DigitalDoofus]

2 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

here's a good tutorial on how to preperly setup a dual boot system

 

if you use the 2TB HDD for media storage, as long as you keep it NTFS, you will bw able ro see it on both OSs, if you format it to e

ext4, only manjoro will be able to see it. The other solution would be to also partition this drive and have a media partition in ntfs for windows and a ext4 partition for manjaro

 

the liveswitch your friend showed you was probably a VM, probably parallel desktop

 

if that what you want you can setup a VM on windows for manjaro

 

Thanks for all of this information I will be sure to use this for my install 

[vorticalbox]

@suicidalfranco you can access ex 2,3 & 4 in windows.

 

http://www.howtogeek.com/112888/3-ways-to-access-your-linux-partitions-from-windows/

[xc3ll]

The simple way of doing this is by using some well known "beginner" distro with an easy installer. Of course, ubuntu in all it's flavors comes to mind. Just plug in your bootable usb, go to the wizard and somewhere along the pretty simple process it will ask you, what you want to do.

 

Just say "install along windows 10" and change the partition size if necessary (if you don't, it will split your drive 50/50, I think....) and there you go.

 

This will install the grub bootloader. On startup, you will see a little screen, where you can select the OS you want to boot in.

 

But be warned: There were some complications with windows 10 in the past. I've already wrote about it, but what happened was, that the windows 1511 update broke grub. Some people reported that the newer 1607 update deleted the linux partition, but I couldn't verify that. Mine worked fine.

 

The (imo) "better" way of dual booting is using a dedicated drive for linux. You can then select the drive you want to boot from in the bios/uefi. But this requires a second drive, which you most likely don't have.

[suicidalfranco]

if you end up with manjaro running on your PC, here's good guide to bash

https://linuxjourney.com

 

You'll not be forced to use the terminal, but on Linux it's always nice to know how to use it

[DigitalDoofus]

1 minute ago, xc3ll said:

The simple way of doing this is by using some well known "beginner" distro with an easy installer. Of course, ubuntu in all it's flavors comes to mind. Just plug in your bootable usb, go to the wizard and somewhere along the pretty simple process it will ask you, what you want to do.

 

Just say "install along windows 10" and change the partition size if necessary (if you don't, it will split your drive 50/50, I think....) and there you go.

 

This will install the grub bootloader. On startup, you will see a little screen, where you can select the OS you want to boot in.

 

But be warned: There were some complications with windows 10 in the past. I've already wrote about it, but what happened was, that the windows 1511 update broke grub. Some people reported that the newer 1607 update deleted the linux partition, but I couldn't verify that. Mine worked fine.

 

The (imo) "better" way of dual booting is using a dedicated drive for linux. You can then select the drive you want to boot from in the bios/uefi. But this requires a second drive, which you most likely don't have.

I have 3 one of which is a blank 2TB drive with the BIOS boot method do you need to go into the BIOS and select the boot device or will it have a menu on startup similar to single drive dual booting?

[ForsakenLive]

Personally I boot with different drives in order to Swap OS. I press the boot option when I turn on the PC and select the unit with the correct OS I want to use. 

I think this is the best way to do it, so you can keep everything organized and make sure your OS and bootloaders arent messing with each other. 

When I need to install a new OS on a empty drive, I unplug all the other drives on the system, then I install, then I turn the PC off and connect all the drives again.

[SCHISCHKA]

23 minutes ago, LazyChaz said:

I've heard that windows and Linux can cause conflicts when present on the same DISK

the problems i have had is that ubuntu will write over the space on the disk windows uses to boot. This was a long time ago; I don't know if that is still an issue as I now have a separate computer running windows.

2 minutes ago, LazyChaz said:

I have 3 one of which is a blank 2TB drive with the BIOS boot method do you need to go into the BIOS and select the boot device or will it have a menu on startup similar to single drive dual booting?

with EFI boot Ubuntu should add an entry for windows automatically. I dont know how well the distribution you have chosen handles this.

 

[DigitalDoofus]

1 minute ago, ForsakenLive said:

Personally I boot with different drives in order to Swap OS. I press the boot option when I turn on the PC and select the unit with the correct OS I want to use. 

I think this is the best way to do it, so you can keep everything organized and make sure your OS and bootloaders arent messing with each other. 

When I need to install a new OS on a empty drive, I unplug all the other drives on the system, then I install, then I turn the PC off and connect all the drives again.

okay so I should unplug everything but the blank 2TB hard drive from my PC, okay I will do that now

[DigitalDoofus]

ok now it's time for bad news I loaded up the install disk after removing every hard drive except for the blank 2TB and tried to boot into Manjaro instead of booting into the desktop environment it's just booting into a CLI looking thing and just spits out errors and then loads into a screen with a flashing cursor at the top I remember it mentioning something about my chipset (AMD 760G) does this mean that my motherboard isn't compatible with Manjaro Linux from what i can tell online when the start Manjaro Linux is selected it boots straight into the desktop installation environment 
 

it doesn't seem to be getting past the cursor screen (flashing white bar at the top left of the screen) should I just wait and see if it boots into Manjaro or is this cursor screen something to do with Manjaro not being able to run. 

 

Thanks in advance for any help ~LazyChaz

[paddy-stone]

17 minutes ago, ForsakenLive said:

Personally I boot with different drives in order to Swap OS. I press the boot option when I turn on the PC and select the unit with the correct OS I want to use. 

I think this is the best way to do it, so you can keep everything organized and make sure your OS and bootloaders arent messing with each other. 

When I need to install a new OS on a empty drive, I unplug all the other drives on the system, then I install, then I turn the PC off and connect all the drives again.

You can do it that way, but IMO it's not needed as long as you can remember partition sizes that you created. I normally set aside only 20GB for a linux distro, and even then you don't need that much, it's just easier for me to remember that amount. I do agree though that it is easier in some case to keep operating systems on separate disks if possible, that way you can indeed just boot from the particular disk using F11 at startup instead of having GRUB or windows manager handle the booting choice. I have occassionally run into problems, but that's another reason I keep backup images, then in the event of a failure or whatever I can re-image the EFI etc partitions to get it back to workable condition.

At the moment I am playing around with VMs again instead though... that way I can keep stuff orderly and use half the screen for my VM and half for my windows OS if needed.

[DigitalDoofus]

14 minutes ago, LazyChaz said:

ok now it's time for bad news I loaded up the install disk after removing every hard drive except for the blank 2TB and tried to boot into Manjaro instead of booting into the desktop environment it's just booting into a CLI looking thing and just spits out errors and then loads into a screen with a flashing cursor at the top I remember it mentioning something about my chipset (AMD 760G) does this mean that my motherboard isn't compatible with Manjaro Linux from what i can tell online when the start Manjaro Linux is selected it boots straight into the desktop installation environment 
 

it doesn't seem to be getting past the cursor screen (flashing white bar at the top left of the screen) should I just wait and see if it boots into Manjaro or is this cursor screen something to do with Manjaro not being able to run. 

 

Thanks in advance for any help ~LazyChaz

Update: Booting with Non-Free Drivers seems to have fixed apparently it's related to the graphics card of all things.