Dual Booting a PC

[Tuur]

With Windows 10 now past it's update life for those of us who haven't gone the extended route, I'm planning to run Linux Mint Cinnamon on my desktop. Current processor won't run Windows 11 (checked, lacks the popcnt instruction set). Could upgrade the processor, but that was half the cost of a new PC for an old system. Nope. Opted for a laptop, which I've been considering for years.

Original plan was to move off pretty much all programs from the desktop and see if I could port the existing install into a virtual machine, and run that under Linux. Then considered a standard dual boot. Have never been keen on two OS on the same hard drive, and back when I used to refurbish discarded machines for my own use, would use a second hard drive for Linux. Thinking about doing this now. A non-SSD hard drive in the 1 TB range is around $40, but the "caddy" and cables bumps it up to $69. Not bad a price, but still don't know.

Anyone else fool with two-drive dual boot systems?

 

[Wookiee]

Yeah, two drives is pretty straight forward, and it's fairly easy with UEFI these days.

If you're going to make any attempts, be sure to backup anything important.

 

[Tuur]

At the moment, files are backed up in two places: An external hard drive and the new lap top. No danger of loosing anything except messing up the MBR. That shouldn't happen, but once did that with a Linux distro that wanted it's very own boot menu. Been years ago, so can't even say which one. Not sure how I'll handle it this time. Before have set up the second drive, disconnected the primary drive, booted to the distro disk (like I said, it's been years), installed Linux to the second drive, then reconnected the primary drive and selected which one I wanted at boot. Maybe that's antiquated and not even done that way anymore.

 

[peaceful-forest]

Which two operating systems are you going to dual boot?

 

[Jerry N.]

I have made a few computers dual-boot, and it is not a problem. Mint Linux is a good choice. However, even with WINE, I have trouble running a CAM program for a CNC. It tends to send the cutter in the wrong direction for a second or two, and the project is ruined. A new CAM program that runs well on Linux is expensive, but I would love to learn of one that isn’t. By the way, you probably can’t dual-boot with Windows 11. I haven’t tried it, but I’m told that Microsoft will delete the Linux partition during updates. Is this true?

 

[Tuur]

I have made a few computers dual-boot, and it is not a problem. Mint Linux is a good choice. However, even with WINE, I have trouble running a CAM program for a CNC. It tends to send the cutter in the wrong direction for a second or two, and the project is ruined. A new CAM program that runs well on Linux is expensive, but I would love to learn of one that isn’t. By the way, you probably can’t dual-boot with Windows 11. I haven’t tried it, but I’m told that Microsoft will delete the Linux partition during updates. Is this true?

A check shows Windows 11 can do that, or at least mess with it. It may be more likely to do a number on GRUB, but GRUB and Windows have never really liked each other much. This will be a Windows 10 / Linux dual boot machine, and might have that tendency, but, having only run dual boot on separate drives, didn't run into that in the Windows XP days.

WINE was always iffy for me. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. One year, when the kids got a game from grandparents, it wouldn't run on our old machine under Windows, but worked perfectly fine on the same machine in Linux under WINE. In those days was tinkering with Debian and Ubuntu, so don't recall which distro it was.

 

[Tuur]

Which two operating systems are you going to dual boot?

Windows 10 and Linux. Could spend about half the cost for a new PC to upgrade the CPU to maybe run Window 11, but it's already an old machine. Licensing costs for Windows 11 was also a consideration, but Microsoft recently offered that at a heavy discount. Basically, when the upgrades and license cost about as much as a new machine, just go with a new machine. Linux Mint is to keep an updated OS on the machine for as long as possible.

 

[Jerry N.]

A check shows Windows 11 can do that, or at least mess with it. It may be more likely to do a number on GRUB, but GRUB and Windows have never really liked each other much. This will be a Windows 10 / Linux dual boot machine, and might have that tendency, but, having only run dual boot on separate drives, didn't run into that in the Windows XP days.

WINE was always iffy for me. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. One year, when the kids got a game from grandparents, it wouldn't run on our old machine under Windows, but worked perfectly fine on the same machine in Linux under WINE. In those days was tinkering with Debian and Ubuntu, so don't recall which distro it was.

You are very correct about GRUB and Windows not getting along.

I might be silly, but I liked Windows XP, except for the authorization code problems. Install a new hard drive, and BOOM, you have to call Microsoft and argue with them. Anyhow, I had an XP machine with Puppy Linux. Puppy was great if you didn’t need to do anything but send emails and look at the internet. Fedora was also a nice system.

WINE has the problem that it sometimes partially works.