Got an old laptop from a friend I’d like to rejuvenate, the plan is to set up a light distro so it wouldn’t be as slow as it is right now with windows 10.
Now, I’m aware windows updates can fuck up a dual boot system, so i have a few questions about how to minimize the threat of that happening.
What i think of doing is running a few scans to check the disk, then setting up Linux Mint, because it is beginner friendly, and (relatively) light weight.
What I’d need help with is trusted guides and also tips for setting up dual booting, I’m sure I’ll need to do disk partitioning and I’ve done that before but I’d still want to make sure I’m doing it correctly.
Any help would be welcome.
The Linux mint installer has an option built-in to create a dualboot. Just follow their guide and be sure to select “install alongside windows 10” at step 5.
Following the guide as i write this :)
Make sure to disable Windows hybrid sleep. If your system isn’t shutdown properly and you access the Windows partition from another system that can destroy data.
If you just want to keep the data on the Windows partition and usually don’t need to run Windows, I’d remove the Windows drive and keep it somewhere safe, and get another SSD for Linux. That way, the two systems are completely separate and can do nothing to each other.
Swap is mostly a crutch for too little RAM, if the system doesn’t have enough the best solution would be an upgrade. If that’s not possible, consider zram-swap, or if you have to, swap to an SSD (that will reduce its lifespan, though maybe not in a relevant manner). If you swap to an old HDD you won’t have much fun using the system.
Hybrid sleep was luckily already disabled, and the laptop has 8GB ram so it should be fine.
Hey OP, how did the installation went?
Swimmingly :)
The laptop is way faster and apparently installing clang is super simple, so developing on linux is expected to go smooth.
I’m going to go with what one of the commenters said and disable the windows booting option and install an NTFS reading program to reach the files in that partition.
I’m very glad i did this, it was planned for months and now I’m very excited :D
I’m really glad to hear that! Happy Linuxing :)
Had a linux moment yesterday, piped “clang --help” into grep to find something, it wasn’t there but the piping itself was awesome.
Don’t have anybody else to tell lol
Thanks for telling me lol. I remember sharing your enthusiasm when I started.
If you don’t mind me sharing, here are some tools I use the most in the console:
- htop: resource monitoring and process killing. Mint has a GUI alternative
- btop: better resource monitoring, but worse process killing than htop.
- lazygit: amazing interface for git. Seems hard to get started, but IMO, not at all. There are GUI alternatived.
- tmux: multiple consoles and console manager. A bit hard to get started.
- nano: text editor. Reeaaaallly simple to use, prefer it over emacs and vi/vim.
- grep: you already know this one.
- cronjobs/crontab: allows you to run periodical commands. Say, a cleanup script all days at 7:08 AM.
Also, some GUI programs I love:
- KDE Connect: device pairing with your cellphone and PC. Includes remote mouse input, multimedia control and file sharing.
- Steam: Almost all the games I play on Steam run flawlessly on Linux.
- Stellarium: astronomy/planetary app.
Pick your poison lol. If you don’t mind, we can start talking via ptivate message.
Saved for late :^)
A couple of days ago I setted up my pc with dual boot; I recommend to install Windows first and then install the distro you want with a swap partition of at least 16Gb and on the linux install options choose GRUB as bootloader
Thanks, a few questions, what is a swap partition, and why is it needed?
Also i have a ton of free storage so the linux install will probably have over 200gb in its partition
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If it isn’t for professional reasons you absolutely can’t avoid, I would switch wholesale. As a once famous song said “Freedom isn’t free. It costs folks like you and me. Andif you don’t put in your buck o five who will?”
It’s not for professional reasons, it’s all personal, plus studies, I’m not switching wholesale because i might need to access the old files (extremely unlikely, but I don’t want to make decisions based on that), and the laptop has enough stirage for me to be happy with the partition i made, which is ~200GB
I can appreciate that. Especially if the files in question are of sentimental value.
I would suggest transferring your files to a new drive anyway because of bit rot.
Being the typical helpful (pushy and self-important) Linux user, I might add there is no reason you can´t transfer them to Linux 😜
I dual boot for two years, because I need a special software for work every couple of months. I mounted my old windows drive in Linux and soft linked it from my Linux home directory. So if I go to home > documents I see my new documents, plus there is a “documents archive” folder, that takes me to my windows drive with it’s older documents. I added these soft links to my music, pictures as well. This works great.
I never experienced any problems with windows destroying my boot options. I’m not an expert, but managed to setup GRUP to instantly boot Linux (Mint). If I want windows, I need to push the boot menu key (F11) and actively select it. Otherwise I don’t even notice it’s even there.
You probably know most of it so just some advice: Don’t format the Partition table (MBR to GPT etc.) on the disk whose data you wish to keep.
Shrinking a partition or moving it carries a small risk of data loss and will take significantly longer than creating a new partition (since data needs to be cut and pasted from one area of the disk to another). If your old laptop has an empty slot for another SSD or NVME drive you can plug that in, and still dualboot and having the new drive Linux only.
Also to deal with the occasional Windows cockups, just carry a boot-repair USB, the auto repair has fixed the Windows issue for me 90% of the time (the other times are usually boot order priority or other BIOS setting)
My advice: Don’t setup dual boot.
Instead, setup Virtualbox in your Linux instance, and install Windows in a VM. You’ll have access to a windows “crutch”, without having to leave Linux to use it.
Windows will actively attempt to destroy your Linux partition at every opportunity, you can dual boot but it won’t be a fun experience.
I’ll try disabling the windows boot like someone said, and read the partition from linux, is enough to avoid the possibility.
If you’re willing to go that far at that point it’s probrally easier (and more stable) to just completely overwrite your windows partitions.
Look i appreciate the help but you didn’t read the rest of the thread, i have a reason to keep it, it non negotiable.
I’ll probrally be one of the few people here to say this but tbh if you need Windows then don’t feel pressured to use Linux. Its not worth (IMO) the stability loss to dualboot, feel free to keep using Windows.
It’s about the files, not the OS
I dual boot Fedora with secure boot enabled for half a year already on my notebook with exactly 0 problems. Did few Windows updates already.
@BlackRoseAmongThorns why? 🤔 😂 fuck dual boot, boot directly into Linux
Kinda need the old OS, it’s a close friend’s computer and it took too long to get just a few files out of it, i want to keep the rest just in case we missed something.
(Also I don’t want to just backup the whole ass hard drive)
You’re messing with partitions which means there is the potential for data loss, be it hardware, human error, or a random cat. You should, if the data is important to you, have a backup.
I’d get a new drive. Install a sane os and needed tools and use that. They should be cheap these days. Put the old one in a safe place in case you need something from it. When you find it years on and notice that there was nothing important there after all, recycle it. That’s a much safer approach.
