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?
I know this is not an answer to your question, but I’ve found everything to be immensely easier with a second drive. I’ve screwed my pooch before!
This is with a laptop. So one would have to be on an external drive. That wouldn’t slow it down?
It would slow it down a bit depending on USB 2 or 3, HDD or SSD and such. But, allowing each OS to have its own boot partition on its own drive usually prevents Windows from overwriting your linux boot. Solves some big dual boot headaches.
Sound great and I went the same way for a while. Just be aware that steam on Linux can have issues with ntfs partitions. So I also went the the two drive route, much less of a headache.
Windows: 150GB. Linux: 100GB. The rest: Data.
And don’t forget to disable hybrid shut down in Windows.
Nice,. thank you. And ntfs for the data format is what I’ve understood to use
NTFS is the standard for Windows. Nowadays Linux can handle reading/writing NTFS pretty well, but you should probably use the very established ext4 or maybe btrfs for its partition.
For Linux, if you’re a beginner, EXT4. Experienced users - BTRFS.
And ntfs-3g is even better at writing on NTFS than Windows is. There are fragmentation examples online, Windows makes a fragmented mess while ntfs-3g takes great care regarding fragmentation. Plus reads/writes a lot faster than Windows does.
Also, I’d say install Windows first, then Linux. Windows assumes it’s the only OS in the universe and tends to steamroll over the whole boot setup, so I’ve found it much easier to just let Windows do whatever it wants first, then fix it with Linux afterwards.
Many people do dual drives, but if you install linux second and it is a distro thay uses grub with probe foreign OS them you don’t really need two drives. make space on windows drive, in the linux installer create another boot partition, root and home. You set bios to boot Linux grub. Grub will launch and give you linux or choice to chainload to Windows. Windows is unaware it is getting kicked off by grub so the Windows and Lunux boot partitions leave each other alone. i can’t vouch for every distro letting you setup like this but this is how my OoenSUSE has been since 2017
