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?
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.
windows can and will destroy your bootloader at least once, show it no mercy
Not if you destroy its bootloader first😈
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
I just did this with my desktop pc when I added a second drive for additional storage. Instead of using it as additional storage for windows like I initially intended, I decided to dual boot with Mint on the second drive.
So far, I haven’t had any issue with gaming on Mint, either! Granted, most of the games I play are through Steam and either work with Proton or are native Linux to begin with. I did install a few games with Lutris, though, and works fine so far. Sea of Thieves, Astroneer, Slay the Spire, Deep Rock Galactic, are all working out of the box.
Only thing I haven’t attempted yet are multiplayer games with active anti-cheat, like LoL or CS:2. If those are the sorts of games you regularly play, you’ll probably be better off in the Windows partition/drive, but have fun experimenting in Linux!
Main game rn is BG3. And ofc want to get back into playing modded Skyrim. There are definitely other, pc only games that are on my list, coming from a Mac. But nothing like LoL or CS:2
Looks like there are a few issues with BG3, but will probably be smoothed with time.
At least according to ProtonDB
Definitely worth keeping access to a Windows machine if able, but doesn’t seem like it’s impossible without.
I plan to look into this ofc, but if the games are on an external hd, would Linux use the same files as Windows? I.e. you don’t need two copies of the game so long as it’s on a format like NTFS that both can read? Was wondering whether to partition the external HD to have a Windows side and then a Linux side, with the latter formatted to ext4
In theory you should be able to do that! I think Proton has some issues with NTFS, mostly when installing or updating, but with a little research and tweaking you should be able to get it to run smoothly. I opted to keep them fully separate and just installed certain games twice, but am also using this as a test run before diving into full daily driver Linux when I build a new system in the spring, so longevity of my storage drives wasn’t a concern.
I think that’s where I’m at, too, where I don’t mind have to re-do certain things down the road if I switch approaches or commit to a certain direction
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.
Yep, use NTFS. You can access it in both Windows and Linux. You’ll need to install ntfs-3g in Linux. It comes bundled in most mainstream distros, but just in case.
What about swap space? Is that still a thing?
Zram is really neat.
That is a good option as well, but for experienced users only and only if you have a lot of RAM and a UPS (or on a laptop with a working battery). Otherwise, power failiures mess that thing up.
You can make a swap file on the main partition where Linux is installed, that’s not a problem.
Keep a minimum of 30GB free, for Windows update processes on the windows system partition. I don’t how much the windows installation counts in space, but add that to the 30gb free space. I would recommend to have a extra partition for the games on NTFS and move your steam, epic, ubisoft, whatever library to that partition.
I have tried to use the same gaming partition between Linux and Windows, but failed every time. In the worst case this can alter your Windows privileges. At least I had this issue.
Currently I’m using Windows only for 2 games: Space Engineers and Empyrion. The rest works with better performance on Linux. Satisfactory, Ark survival, Elder Scrolls Online have more FPS on Linux with the same settings. I have to use a nvidia 1050 Ti in my laptop. With a AMD GPU the situation is a lot better on Linux.
I’m not a hardcore gamer, mostly im coding here and there. But sometimes gaming is a must have.
Space Engineers is such a good game
I was going to put games on an external hard drive, at least for Windows side. Maybe I should also partition the external HD and have an ext4 formatted partition for when I decide to game on the Linux side?
Yes. Because some games work only with proper privileges. This can get complicated on NTFS.
Thank you!
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.
Just out of curiosity, if the games are on an external hard drive with a different format does that skirt the issue between Linux steam and ntfs?
External drive as in via USB? You folks must have had better experiences than I, because I have absolutely zero faith in the USB interface.