Hey everyone!
I got my desktop with dual boot (Kubuntu & W11) and wanted to know if I ever go fully Kubuntu, am I able to reinstall Windows again?
I don’t have a disc, but my desktop came with it pre-installed. Is it tied to my Live account?
How does one set this up? Just create a blank VM and pass the drive through?
I set mine up a while back, I can’t remeber if I installed windows 10 on bare metal or in the VM. I remember I tried both, I want to say installing in the VM worked better. But what I do, is first set up KVM/qemu with virtual machine manager. Then IF YOU DONT HAVE WINDOWS ALREADY wipe the drive you want for windows. I usually just wipe and leave it as free space and not create a partition. Then in virtual machine manager, create a new virtual machine. Use local install media as the install option, select your windows ISO, then instead of ‘create disk image for virtual machine’, you check 'select or create custom storage and type in /dev/nvme1n1 or whatever the drive address is. check the customize before install and make sure its using UEFI instead of BIOS.
IF YOU ALREADY HAVE WINDOWS INSTALLED, open virtual machine manager, add new virtual machine, manual install, select or create custom storage, then type ‘/dev/nvme1n1’ or whatever your address is. Check the custumize configuration before install and make sure its using UEFI instead of BIOS.
for both you’ll want to install the KVM windows drivers you can find them on github
I tried that once, technically possible but it wouldn’t let me login on the install I had been using long term previously (seemed fine on a completely fresh install)
Need windows little enough that I’ve just put my existing license in a fresh VM instead
You can download the windows iso from windows webpage, but if I remember correctly you have to do it in Windows since it depends on a downloader program. Then you should store the windows cd-key just in case, you shouldn’t need it and there are ways to recover it from Linux if this is an OEM machine, but it’s always better safe than sorry.
With all that being said, a bit of unpopular opinion now. Why do you want to do that? I kept a windows partition for years because I never knew if I would need it, it was only when I realised I hadn’t touched Windows in months that I felt comfortable removing it, and at that time I didn’t cared if it could be reinstalled. The reason I’m asking is because if you have to ask about it you probably never installed windows on a machine, so you don’t know how to do that, and it’s a lot more complex than Linux because Windows needs all of the drivers to be manually installed to work properly, and while Windows 10 is a bit better in finding those drivers automatically it’s still a Pain in the ass to ensure it got the correct things and wait the thousands of reboots to apply all updates because updates are cumulative in Windows.
You can download the windows iso from windows webpage, but if I remember correctly you have to do it in Windows since it depends on a downloader program.
It only forces you to use the media creation tool on Windows, everything else it gives you a link to download the ISO.
I kept a windows partition for years because I never knew if I would need it, it was only when I realised I hadn’t touched Windows in months that I felt comfortable removing it
I’m exactly the same.
If you wanna dual boot, I’d recommend installing windows 1st, Linux 2nd. The windows installer has a very high chance to mess up the Linux bootloader, even if you tell it not to touch that particular partition
I’m kind of doing something similar. I built a machine from scratch and installed arch Linux on it. Now I want to see if i can plug in a hard drive from an older computer that already had windows on it. Then dual boot from that. Not sure what I’ll run into but I’m probably going to try it this weekend.
I’m running that and I don’t have any issues. I just have to go to bios instead of using a boot manager.
Perfect, thanks a bunch for the replies! Seems I’ll be trying to go full Kubuntu soon then, now that Steam’s Proton is doing so well!
