I have a Lenovo Yoga running Windows 10 on a 1TB SSD and at some point will probably have to upgrade it to Windows 11. I use it for school and have to keep Windows on it for now because of what I’m currently doing. I want to start getting into Linux in hopes of making the switch sometime down the line. Is partitioning the disk and dual booting Windows/Linux a thing and is it possible/easy to do? If so, what distro would anyone recommend? (I’ve heard good things about Mint). Back in the day I had gotten bored one night, installed Ubuntu on an external drive and played around with it a very tiny bit before forgetting about it, but that’s the extent of my Linux knowledge, so kindly keep explanations ELI5 :)
Edit: Thank you everyone! You’ve given me lots of good advice and knowledge, some terms to Google, and some good places to start. I appreciate it! Looking forward to joining the wonderful world of Linux!
Duel booting has been a thing for as I have been using Linux, say 2004ish, and it has only gotten easier over the last 20 years.
Some things to watch out for though. First, make sure that you have sufficient free space on your drive before beginning, and make sure that you have backups in case something goes sideways. Good practice anyways.
Second, Windows likes to hijack the bootloader making it difficult to boot into Linux. I would make sure that Windows is installed first and have a live linux disk/jumpdrive available in case Windows decides to hijack the boot loader at a later date. That has only happened to me once, and wasn’t difficult to fix, but it was a pain in the butt.
As for which distro, dealer’s choice. I don’t think that there is a bad distro out there currently. Currently, I’m using NixOS but I think highly of Ubuntu, Fedora and all of their derivatives. Really, it’s whatever boats your float.
Important note: Shrink the Windows partition from within Windows!
When I did it in Linux Mint during install, Windows did not recognize those changes and thought its partition is still as big as it used to. Then soon I was hit with “Repairing drive C:” which screwed up the Linux Mint install (not the bootloader).
it’s probably caused by fast shutdown
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Yeah, this matches my experience. 10+ years ago, a windows update might randomly wipe out grub and I have to live boot and repair it. These days, my dual boot config has worked without issue for several years.
Good to know! I haven’t run a dual boot configuration in at least 15 years.