I’m looking to install Linux on our home laptop and see if I can convince my wife to migrate off Windows. Since I’m not sure there won’t be times we need or want to boot back into Windows, I want to set it up so we can dual boot. The laptop only has a spot for one drive however so I can’t use two drives and chose them with the bios. I know in the past Windows has been problematic with dual boot setups on a single drive, corrupting the boot drive following updates and what-not. I’d really like to avoid that if possible.
Any suggestions on how best to go about it, or something I should at least avoid because it’s known to be problematic?
You must log in or register to comment.
You don’t need to have different drives to avoid Windows overriding your bootloader. Having a separate EFI partition for your Linux install should be enough.
Actually having different drives is insufficient to keep windows and linux, or multiple different linux install, from fighting over bootloaders lol.
I have no problems with separate drives for my dual-boot setup. The easiest way to set it up is to install linux on one, remove it, install Windows on the other, plug in the linux disk back and then use the UEFI boot manager to switch between them. This way, each OS gets its own EFI partition that doesn’t mess with the other’s. You can also do this without removing the linux disk after installing. The only caveat is that you may need to manually restore the Windows EFI.
Thank you. I don’t know much about setting up EFI partitions but I do wonder if that’s what is allowing some to seemingly avoid trouble while others don’t. I’ll try this.
Agreed on other recommendations to test with a live environment via USB drive first.
If you decide after that to proceed with a dual boot, I wouldn’t worry as much about Windows breaking it these days. I have a Windows 11 dual boot on a Dell laptop. It has had Debian, Fedora and now openSUSE Tumbleweed as my main OS for some time. I have gone through around 3 years of Windows updates and there haven’t been any problems with that.
In my case I reinstalled Windows 11 first, reducing the size of the Windows system partition. I created a shared NTFS partition at the end of the drive and then installed Linux with / and /home partitions in the middle of the disk.
You could check Disk Management in Windows to see how much you can shrink your system partition. If it gives you enough space that’s worth a try as a first step.
I’ve worked with a live environment USB drive a few times but found the drives to be too slow for substantial use. The laptop is an old Toshiba Satellite running Windows 10 with an old Intel 47xx and 12GB of memory. Works fine but obviously trying to leave Windows. App-wise, I know my wife is going to want to use Microsoft Word and Excel, and we always use this laptop for our taxes, so TurboTax. Disk-wise, I bought a new 1TB SSD to use for this and as it currently only has a 256GB drive, I’ll have plenty of room for partitions.
Interesting strategy having Windows partitions at the beginning and end of the drive. Was that intentional to maybe make Windows not notice Linux? What boot manager are you using? The fact that you’ve went so long without issue certainly makes it sound like a good way to avoid Windows messing things up, but maybe your boot manager does a better job than others too.
It’s just GRUB for boot on this PC, and that’s how I’m selecting Windows or Linux - in the GRUB menu. This might break if I did a Windows version upgrade, but so far feature updates are not a problem.
I don’t think the placement of the partitions mattered much from a technical standpoint. I just liked the idea of a shared data partition at the end.
But yeah, if you’re thinking about just jumping from the current setup to the 1TB SSD it would be pretty easy to use dd to clone old to new by doing a live boot from USB and having the new drive in an external enclosure (the command would be something like
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=64K status=progress- but double-check which drive id is used for each by comparing the names and sizes withlsblkfirst). That will copy the current disk contents to the first 256 GB of the new drive and leave the rest as free space. Swap in the new drive and test to be sure it boots to Windows. Then boot using Linux install media of your choice and install to the free space. If you’re not sure about the distro yet, you might want to have a separate /home to make it easier to try other flavors without wiping out your user files.If anything goes south you’ll have the original drive to swap in and get to Windows.
Running MS Office in Linux will be a headache unless you have a very old full install version (not the current click-to-run tech). I would recommend giving Libre Office apps a try to replace Microsoft Office. I’ve found both Writer and Calc to have great compatibility with Microsoft features, and their UI is very intuitive. I only saw Excel workbooks have problems in Calc where very proprietary features were in use, like online stock quotes through the Microsoft back-end, and things like sparklines. Pretty complex formulas on a very large workbook were no problem. If either of you are using MS Office apps for work then definitely test compatibility before you make the jump. You can test that on Windows since Libre Office works on both Windows and Linux.
Thank you for the reply. I only know enough about dd to know I don’t know enough to be doing anything with it, but I might try it anyway. 😀 I can clone the old to new drive using Macrium Reflect but not sure if that might impact the Linux install that follows… I assume not.
Anyway, thank you again for sharing so many details.
You can do it. The main thing to watch out for is correct in and out device names. If you switch them it’s not going to warn you before overwriting the current drive with the emptiness of the new drive!
Also, you’ll need to sudo that command. But
lsblkis something you can do as a regular user.
we always use this laptop for our taxes, so TurboTax. Disk-wise
Independent of your experiements with Linux, it may be a good idea to switch away from turbotax. They’ve been lobbying to make filing taxes harder for the past 20 years.
More relevant to the Linux discussion at hand, they’re locked into a specific operating system, whereas the alternatives are much more modern and work just fine in a regular web browser. I’ve had good success across three states with freetaxusa, personally.
If you got one of them new fancy usb drives with proper speeds (f.e Kingston Datatraveler Max) then maybe try installing your favourite distro on it and boot from that?
I second this, using a live environment to try it out is the way to go, windows still has a multitude of issues with dual booting that make it impossible to recommend. As an aside, OP what are the programs that you are wary about, buy in large everything works on Linux, you just either need to use the oss alternative or in some very specific cases your Sol
App-wise, I know my wife is going to want to use Microsoft Word and Excel, and we always use this laptop for our taxes, so TurboTax. I have a feeling running from a USB drive will be way too slow.
I know my wife is going to want to use Microsoft Word and Excel
Has your wife tried out the libreoffice suite or the online version of office? If not I would highly recommend the former then the later if it doesn’t work out for you, as running ms office on Linux is officially impossible and unofficially a pain in the ass.
and we always use this laptop for our taxes, so TurboTax
If it must be turbotax, a VM or wine will be the move, if it doesn’t need to be, there is opentaxsolver, although I have no experience with any of these software suites.
I have a feeling running from a USB drive will be way too slow.
In general it should more than suffice, the only thing is load times will be high, but not unbereably so.
Thanks. I forget about the online version of MS. That might be our fallback plan if we get desperate.
Turbotax can be used from a web browser, you don’t need to install a program. There’s also FreeTaxUSA, and numerous other sites that do the same thing.
LibreOffice is very feature-complete compared to MS Office.
The Kingston Datatraveler Max will be more than fast enough
https://ssd-tester.com/kingston_datatraveler_max_usb-a_256gb.html
https://www.kingston.com/en/usb-flash-drives/datatraveler-maxIf you’re unwilling to change software suites thst is gonna be the bigger problem.
Being that this laptop is probably 15 years old, I’m doubt the USB slots are going to benefit much from those high speed drives. They are USB3 at least.
Software-suite wise, I suspect that won’t be a problem long-term but I know we’ll have to look closely at least a few of our more complex documents - such as resumes - to make sure they can be converted properly. My wife is a spreadsheet maniac too, though I expect most won’t take special handling. Being able to boot back to Windows in a pinch will be beneficial though.
Being able to boot back to Windows in a pinch will be beneficial though.
The annoying thing is that this is not possible without sacrificing system stability, there are about half a dozen known issues with windows update removing Linux bootloaders in a dual boot system, and it has personally bricked my system twice even with booting from a separate drive. I would highly recommend making your fallback a VM like qemu or a more well integrated one like winboat, it is just not worth the risk to dual boot.
That’s definitely my fear. Tychosmoose’s experience gives me hope but maybe that’s just setting me up for disappointment. I guess I at least wanna make sure I keep my system backed up before updating Windows and maybe disabling auto updates.
I do not believe you can disable auto update anymore on windows.
Half the speed of USB 3.2 Gen2 is still plenty fast. :)
Being that this laptop is probably 15 years old
Core2Duo? Or 1st-gen i3/i5/i7? Either way, that will still run Linux just fine.
Being able to boot back to Windows in a pinch will be beneficial though.
That’s where a VM will shine.
With dual booting, you have to reboot the whole system into the other OS. With a VM, you can just run Windows inside that in the background, and open it right back up if needed.
I’ll definitely have to try that. What VM software would you recommend? My experience with VMs is very limited and only on Windows, not Linux.
The CPU is an Intel 47xx… can’t recall exact model. It’s a decent machine with 12GB of memory so should handle a VM ok even.
i7-4770 or i7-4790? Those Haswell-based CPUs are legendary, even in 2025. I built an i7-4790K based gaming rig probably 10 years ago or so, it was an absolute monster.
For VMs on Linux, I would recommend something called “Virtual Machine Manager”. It’s in nearly every distro’s software repository, and uses
qemu(common virtualization tool in Linux servers all over the world) for the backend. But whatever you do, stay away from “VirtualBox”.
I’d honestly image the windows drive and nuke it with mint or pop. That way she gets the full experience and if she isn’t happy reimaging is easy.
Mint was my thought since I’m using it on a couple home servers. I do however feel like I need to have a Windows boot option just in case she’s not happy or we run into problems with app compatibility. And honestly, I’m not at all familiar with trying to run Windows apps on Linux. I’ve only used Linux in a server environment myself, never as a desktop. I’m also about to jump ship with my primary machine too, but that’s a different story and I don’t have to worry about her having trouble using it.
Don’t dual boot Windows with anything. Windows will overwrite the bootloader; it’s not a matter of “if”, but “when”.
Figure out what programs you need and if there are equivalents on Linux, or if the existing program has a version compatible with Linux (you’d be surprised).
Once you get that squared away, back everything up, blow Windows away, and install Linux. There are many flavors, but you honestly can’t go wrong with Debian and its variants - my go-to is Linux Mint Debian Edition.
What if I dual boot Linux with Windows 10, but I’m always offline with Windows 10. Will it still corrupt the Linux install?
Offline? Couldn’t tell you; I can only offer my anecdotal experience.
Blast! I was really hoping you knew. Thanks anyway.
Best suggestion I have is a bit involved. This is assuming the laptop uses an nvme storage drive, if not, replace “external nvme enclosure” with “external sata enclosure”. Pull the windows drive out entirely, install a new drive. Install linux of choice on the new drive. Flip a coin, have a long conversation about expectations, or otherwise decide which to leave in the laptop before putting it back together. Tell BIOS to boot USB first always, then internal drive. If the external is not plugged in at boot, you boot whatever you left inside (windows or linux). If you plug in the enclosure, you boot the other. I don’t know how windows will react when ran entirely from an external over usb (highly recommend a good enclosure that has good speeds and connects to usb c even better), but linux doesn’t even seem to care.
My preference would be leave linux physically in the laptop, and keep the windows drive in the enclosure somewhere nearby for emergency use only. I’d bet you find that you go a long time without needing the windows drive (if ever), but if it is “too easy” to just boot to windows instead, most people will tend that way.
Do you have an old laptop. I think that most folks will be bowled over at how well linux runs on their old machine. You sound like you have one laptop for the whole household though so not sure but one within the last ten years should do fine.
