Will be installing either Mint or Pop_OS on a new laptop which has a 512gb SSD. Will keep Windows for gaming, at least for now, with the games installed on an external HD. But otherwise, this is to experiment with living in Linux.
I understand that I can unallocate HD space from Windows in order to make room for the LInux OS, leaving at least 25 or 30gb for the Linux OS itself.
Do I then extend that space further, so to speak, to allow for any other programs I might install as well as for data? Do I create a third partition for data that will be shared between the two OS?
What’s a reasonable breakdown?
e.g.
Windows 100gb; Linux 400gb or
Win 100gb; Linux 30gb; Data (NTFS) 370gb?
Here are some of my tips for a stable dual boot:
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Always install windows 1st, it has a change to fck up the Linux bootloader if you install it after Linux.
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Make a separate home partition in Linux. Even through your best efforts, windows update can and does break other bootloaders from time to time, making a separate home partition allows you to avoid the pain of either wasting hours trying to recover your bootloader or losing all of your data on the root partition if windows fcks it up.
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Use a customized version of windows that has updates set to security only. You can use something like ReviOS or Atlas or ChrisTitus’s windows debloater to set updates to security only by yourself.
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If possible, install windows and Linux on separate disks. This is not strictly necessary but I’ve found out that the 2 OSs play much nicer with 1 another if they are on separate physical disks.
Hope this helps!
I appreciate the tips, thank you. When you mention making a separate home partition in Linux: my understanding is that we unallocate hard drive space from Windows and, when we first install Linux, it will use that free space to make its own partition. Are you referring to another step, beyond that?
No, no, most Linux installers have the option to separate /home into it’s own partition, because yesz you can put the /home directory on a separate partition and just mount it to /home on boot.
I looked into this little bit.
So on a 512gb hd an e.g. breakdown:
Windows 150gb
Linux / 30gb
Linux /home ? 70gb
Data (nfts format, shared with both os) 262gb (or whatever is actually left over)
(I’ll have an external HD for games)
Started dual booting Pop a few weeks ago, kept Windows for gaming for the same concern, but if you’ve got the major of your games in stream, Proton really is amazing. Had 0 issues with any game so far.
Check out Protondb and see if your current games are supported or not.
Once I’m 100% comfortable with Linux again I’ll probably bin of windows forever.
I already had a Windows install so letting Windows manage the bootloader seemed easier as I know it can cause issues if it thinks it’s not the OS as others have said.
All my games are off steam currently lol. I’m hearing the collective message of how feasible Linux is for gaming, tho
Keeping windows is also an “in case” measure because I’m ignorant with both OS, at this point: in case some use case comes up where having Windows is easiest to get something done. My goal is to keep to Linux as much as possible. Purely because I want to become familiar with it
Keep a minimum of 30GB free, for Windows update processes on the windows system partition. I don’t how much the windows installation counts in space, but add that to the 30gb free space. I would recommend to have a extra partition for the games on NTFS and move your steam, epic, ubisoft, whatever library to that partition.
I have tried to use the same gaming partition between Linux and Windows, but failed every time. In the worst case this can alter your Windows privileges. At least I had this issue.
Currently I’m using Windows only for 2 games: Space Engineers and Empyrion. The rest works with better performance on Linux. Satisfactory, Ark survival, Elder Scrolls Online have more FPS on Linux with the same settings. I have to use a nvidia 1050 Ti in my laptop. With a AMD GPU the situation is a lot better on Linux.
I’m not a hardcore gamer, mostly im coding here and there. But sometimes gaming is a must have.
I was going to put games on an external hard drive, at least for Windows side. Maybe I should also partition the external HD and have an ext4 formatted partition for when I decide to game on the Linux side?
Yes. Because some games work only with proper privileges. This can get complicated on NTFS.
External drive as in via USB? You folks must have had better experiences than I, because I have absolutely zero faith in the USB interface.
windows can and will destroy your bootloader at least once, show it no mercy
