I unfortunately need Windows for work reasons, and will be installing Windows 10 on a separate drive. My main drive is Fedora with full disk LUKS2 encryption, and I’ll install Win10 on the other drive through live USB while the Linux drive is disconnected. I have some questions related to this setup however:
- I do not have Secure Boot enabled, but iirc Windows 10 should have no issues with it?
- Will the two operating systems be truly isolated and independent? I.e. if I boot into one, it won’t in any way affect the other? I’m particularly nervous about Windows trying something on the Linux drive.
- If the Windows drive installs some kernel-level stuff like anti-cheat, would it manage to affect the Linux drive? E.g. alter the boot options?
- I’ll be installing Win10 using this tool; are there any considerations I should make for such a dual boot setup?
I know this post is a little bit Windows-directed, so let me know if I should make my post elsewhere. Thank you for the help!
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Do you really need to boot your computer in Windows? Maybe a VM is good enough?
I’m doing a lot of local compiling and GPU heavy stuff, so I’m thinking a dedicated drive is a little bit more comfortable, as long as there aren’t any issues like the concerns mentioned.
I can’t answer all question, but from my dual-booting experience (Win10, Mint) you don’t want to open data on one system drive through the other system. In my machine I had Drive A (Win10), Drive B (Mint) and Drive C (to dump data on) When booting up Windows, it frequently told me to wait while it repaired Drive C. I suppose linux and windows leave different traces on drives they use, causing Windows to think there is something worth repairing on the drive. Linux had no issues with it, I think. But most importantly I didn’t lose any data.
I don’t think kernel level anticheat should mess with your boot options, at least it didn’t for me.
I used this setup for my last work laptop. Arch + Win10 on separate drives. I was lucky with my ThinkPad that the UEFI boot select (F12 on boot) was easy to use, so I didn’t actually use grub/etc. at all. Just select Windows drive and boot, or select Linux drive and boot (systemd-boot).
During installation, I had each other drive disconnected, such that the bootloader for each system ended up on the right drive. Also makes the installation less stressful as you can wipe and flash the whole drive without worrying about a mix-up.
Did not use secure boot at the time. No issues there from memory. My current setup is win11 and secure boot with openSUSE. Possible, but a bit more of a headache to get right.
Never had any issues with either drive affecting the other. You will be able to get into the windows/NTFS drive from Linux which can cause issues if Windows is in a hibernate state. Try to avoid doing that in general. Windows generally can’t see the other filesystem, maybe the boot partition, but it should stick to its own drive. I don’t think I ever had cross-contamination.
Kernel level business should have no effect on boot and drive setup. Also UEFI and microcode patches from either OS always seemed to work fine.
I’ve never seen that Win10 tool before. Honestly I’d recommend just using their USB install media and doing a normal setup. I’ve tried to be tricky with Windows N in the past but it came back to bite me. It’s probably fine regardless if you choose o use it.
Absolute worst case: keep a live USB handy. At least that way you can always get back to a recovery mode if something does go wrong.
Final thoughts: Windows 11 seems to play better with a shared UEFI boot volume. I haven’t had an issue so far (>1 year) with windows trying to edit or break the boot setup. I have had Win10 change the boot order in the past, but I feel like that might have been aligned with major windows updates. Probably not much of a concern nowdays.
yeah for dual booting OS’ Thinkpads are top notch. like you said you can even avoid using grub as the thinkpad will have both a windows and linux boot option by default (at least my E595 also did).
for others that need to go this route seriously consider purchasing a used thinkpad. they’re dirt cheap on the after market and are built like a brick house. I have a couple of 6+ year old ones and they’re still rock solid. best linux machines you can get. you can easily score one for well under $300 and they’re also so painfully easy to upgrade, just about everything, hardware wise. for one of mine I upgraded the screen, the cpu, ram, ssds, even the keyboard (backlit) and trackpad. Honestly the hardest part was opening the damn case.
Windows 10 is EOL
I would strongly recommend that you install Windows 11 if you need Windows. Fedora along with many other distros support secure boot and thus will have no issue with Windows 11
Microsoft recently said that they’ll continue giving security updates through October 2027, so I was thinking of riding it as long as possible before having to switch over to the Windows 11 mess that I’ve read so much about… Hopefully it will be much more mature by then.
Windows 10 and 11 are very similar. I would just install Windows 11 pro and then activate it with the massgrave scripts
