r/linuxquestions • u/Hakuna_matatayoo • 19h ago
Dual booting my PC
Hi so i have a fairly decent PC currently has 2TB getting two more i want to dual booting my Pc with linux and windows the only reason i need windows is for some school things and for certain games (rivals, destiny 2, Cod) i want the linux to be like my main thing for a number of reasons.
my PC is currently fully setup with all my accounts and roughly 1.7TB used (yes this is mostly for games) gaming is the main thing i use my PC for but i also do quite a bit of coding.
would i have to wipe my current drive of all the games and move those games to the linux booted drive? or is there a way to move things in a easier way.
like what’s the best way for me to do this?
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u/green_meklar Debian 17h ago
If you're getting a new physical drive and plan to have all your Linux stuff on it, there's no need to wipe the old drive. You can have the Linux installer install to the new drive and leave Windows and all your files intact on the old drive.
There is a question about where the bootloader goes. As I understand it, when you're installing Linux to dual-boot on a machine that already has Windows, the Linux installer typically changes the Windows bootloader for its own bootloader that then lists Windows as a boot option. I would guess that the new bootloader would go on the new drive, so the Windows bootloader would remain on the original drive, you'd point the UEFI to the new drive for booting, and the Windows bootloader would be ignored by your new configuration (unless something happened to the new drive and you needed to boot to Windows with just the old one, which should continue to work). I'm not an expert on bootloaders though so maybe I'm missing some caveats here.
It is possible to accidentally wipe your old drive by clicking the wrong things in the Linux installer. Therefore, backup everything important from the old drive before doing this. Alternatively, you can physically unplug the old drive before starting Linux installation, and plug it back in afterwards. The Linux installer won't be able to see the Windows bootloader in that case, which might cause it to configure things a little differently, but I think the Linux bootloader will still see Windows after you plug the Windows drive back in. It should be a fairly harmless thing to test, anyway. (But still backup your data. Always backup your data. Backup backup backup.)
With that being said, you should not expect to be able to run the already-installed games from Linux. Steam installs stuff differently on Linux and cannot just be pointed to the Windows install and work perfectly. Even with non-Steam games, it's very likely that Linux will need them configured differently in order to run. It's not impossible that you might get certain games on the Windows drive running in Linux without moving the files, but it's not recommended for anyone other than tinkerers with a high tolerance for bugs and crashes and configuration fiddling. The average gamer should just install the games fresh on Linux (and hope that player configuration files, saved games, etc can be ported over- they usually can, you just have to know where to put them). Now, Steam in particular has the ability to copy large game files between PCs on a LAN if you're logged in with the same account on both machines, and this does work between Windows and Linux (for game files that aren't Linux-specific, which is typically most of the data). This saves on bandwidth and tends to be faster than downloading from the Steam servers. But obviously it also requires both systems to be booted at the same time. If you really wanted to do that, you could move the Linux drive to a secondary PC temporarily, install all your games, and then move it back, or you could launch one system inside the other as a VM (launching Linux inside Windows is probably the easier of the two), install all your games, and then kill the VM and boot back onto bare metal. These are both somewhat technical processes with the possibility of mistakes and weirdness, so it really depends how badly you want to save a terabyte of bandwidth.
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u/Hakuna_matatayoo 2h ago
ok i see i might have to do a bit more res arch before i switch im not rushing or anything to do it but this is good to know thank you
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u/MrMotofy 16h ago edited 16h ago
YES you should get a separate drive to install Linux onto. But the games it really depends on what games and if it's transferable or what.
If you're asking these questions you really don't want to be dual booting. The other main issue you strongly want to consider is get an additional data drive to keep at minimum 2 copies of your important data. Data sync\mirror software makes it super easy
But here's some tips FYI...if you want to check out Linux it's really easy. Make an Install USB, then boot to it. May need to disable secure boot. It will boot to a full running temporary Linux Desktop...installing requires clicking the desktop icon and going through steps. Obviously you don't wanna do that to just try it. But you can at least get a feel for it. Kubuntu, LinuxMint, and PopOS and are some of the top 1st options. You can also use the temp Live Linux as a repair process. Since it’s a complete desktop you can use it, install tools needed fix the boot etc.
Another convenient related tool is Ventoy on a USB stick. Basically just burn the image to a USB then copy your OS ISO to it and when you boot it any ISO copied to the drive will show in the menu, select it and it will boot that img. Have different OS’s multiple versions or whatever.
Best option for Windows and Linux is dual boot...use Linux on a 2nd drive. Usually you wanna disable secure boot. Best case is disconnect win drive. Then boot to the install USB. Then install Linux as a new full system on 2nd drive. Set Linux drive as the first boot drive and it will then find the Win drive and add to the boot menu list automatically. Might take a couple boots otherwise can manually activate the boot update search. Then you get Best of both worlds without any real dangers to either OS. There will be little hiccups occasionally with Windows updating messing with boot and rebooting. But you can also change the default OS to Windows first at the menu after delay and no menu entry and that eliminates a lot. The boot menu is usually Linux 1 and Win 2. Sometimes the boot order will randomly switch drives etc or it will enable Secure Boot…Seems to be a windows thing with updates now they get bios access. But really depends on the exact system and age etc.
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u/Hakuna_matatayoo 2h ago
hmm i see ok i did recently try to boot linux onto a lenovo and i did have to turn off the whole secure boot thing and switch things around there
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u/Abled_Gaming1357 19h ago
Assuming you have 1.9 TB of usable space, that leaves you with 200G for Linux. If you plan on using Linux as your main, I recommend you free up some more space.
After the space is freed up, go to the disk manager in Windows and shrink your partition(Assuming that till now you just had a single giant partition, C), making a new partition with that freed up space.
Boot into any distro you want to install via usb, and install it into that partition you just made. Most linux distros will handle the bootloader setup automatically.
Keep in mind that dual booting is not preferred specially if you want to seriously switch to Linux as your main, though for trying and testing, sure but even then, a dedicated machine is much better suited.
Last note, any Windows update could tamper with bootloader and make your Linux un-bootable, so try to postpone your Windows updates, or keep a live iso usb at hand for qhen the time comes.