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?
Here are some of my tips for a stable dual boot:
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Always install windows 1st, it has a change to fck up the Linux bootloader if you install it after Linux.
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Make a separate home partition in Linux. Even through your best efforts, windows update can and does break other bootloaders from time to time, making a separate home partition allows you to avoid the pain of either wasting hours trying to recover your bootloader or losing all of your data on the root partition if windows fcks it up.
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Use a customized version of windows that has updates set to security only. You can use something like ReviOS or Atlas or ChrisTitus’s windows debloater to set updates to security only by yourself.
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If possible, install windows and Linux on separate disks. This is not strictly necessary but I’ve found out that the 2 OSs play much nicer with 1 another if they are on separate physical disks.
Hope this helps!
I appreciate the tips, thank you. When you mention making a separate home partition in Linux: my understanding is that we unallocate hard drive space from Windows and, when we first install Linux, it will use that free space to make its own partition. Are you referring to another step, beyond that?
No, no, most Linux installers have the option to separate /home into it’s own partition, because yesz you can put the /home directory on a separate partition and just mount it to /home on boot.
I looked into this little bit.
So on a 512gb hd an e.g. breakdown:
Windows 150gb
Linux / 30gb
Linux /home ? 70gb
Data (nfts format, shared with both os) 262gb (or whatever is actually left over)(I’ll have an external HD for games)
Yep, smth like that, I’d make /home like 90gb personally, but 70 is also fine. Also beware, format your external drive as exFAT, not ntfs. Linux can run games from an ntfs partition, steam cannot (it’s been an issue for a while)
Huh. I was going to have an external HD for games with two partitions: a larger one for PC, formatted in ntfs, and a smaller one for Linux, for if I want to try gaming with it, and formatted in ext4. You’re suggesting that both should be in exfat, instead?
My opinion. Keep it simple and don’t use a separate partition for home. You never know which directory will be larger (home or root). Just keep a live USB handy so that you can repair the bootloader or fstab or whatever config that got messed up. Keeping a separate partition is not that helpful because even if you mess up, you can easily access your data within the same partition using a live USB.
You’re keeping a common NTFS partition so my advice is to store everything there (downloads, documents, media files) unless it specifically requires a linux filesystem (like app images). So whatever will be left in your linux partitions will be smaller, both in size and number, so you can take a backup easily in case your OS doesn’t boot.
I appreciate the input, thank you. When you say live USB, is it one that contains the original data used to create the distro — like, e.g. what I’d download from Mint? Or do you mean to just copy the whole LInux partition (given that it’s small enough) onto a USB?
LiveUSB means a usb stick from which you can boot linux temporarily (in case of Ubuntu LiveUSB, the option says something like “try Ubuntu before installing”) and which also provides you an option to install/reinstall the OS.
You can boot from a USB like that and still access and manipulate files on your SSD/HDD.
No hard requirement for it to be the same distro that you have installed, just convenient in case you want to reinstall.
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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.
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!
windows can and will destroy your bootloader at least once, show it no mercy
Not if you destroy its bootloader first😈
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
