Do you dual boot Linux and Windows?

I nuked my Win7 partition about a year ago as I hadn’t used it for months at that point. It’s Linux all the way now. :slight_smile:

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Dual boot only Linux OS’s I got rid of Windows a few years back and that was my wife’s machine which had Windows 10 on it

I dual booted for for years. Various flavors of Win & Linux - NT4, XP, Win2k, Win Server, Win7, etc. Ubuntu versions 7.04 through 10.04 which I stuck with for ages dual booting with Win 7. Then Ubuntu MATE 14.04 and Win 7 for a while. When I finally retired my old system and went to the current Xeon workstation I ditched dual booting completely since I never used Windows at all. I haven’t looked back! I do keep some VBox installs of Windows but I never use them.

There are still several other Windows machines in the house, but none of them are mine. I’ve tried converting the rest of the family to open source but they’re resistant to change.

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I never dual booted,
Hum Umm, No I cannot said that… I dual booted for maybe a year or two around 2000-2001 between Windows 98 or millenium and Linux Mandrake, then i came back to Windows as it was a nightmare to make things just working without alert, errors or crashes. And I do not even speak about the need to compile software, add libraries, and so on, when you wanted to install a software and the softwares were quite unstable, I tried very hard to like it, though. But I erase the Madrake partition and came back to Windows.

After years of reformating the hard drive every years under Windows in 2010-11 i switched to Mac (iMac).
In the beginning i installed Wine, but quickly i found it useless (to slow) and anyway i have found a ton of alternative softwares i have to use on Windows and those alternatives were working very well on Mac, so i removed Wine after few month and used only .dmg softwares.
iTunes get me fed-up of Mac, I litterally HATE iTunes and its updates which always change the UI and many more things, as well as many other reasons: for example, adding hardware like a simple 4GB RAM is a nightmare to be recognized on a Mac if it do not come from Apple.

Then I switched back to PC in 2016 (november) But this time a complete switch to Linux (Ubuntu-Mate), no wine, no VM and now i HATE Mac even more because I am not allowed to write on my external HD or USB when i plug them to another OS => because of the F@#$%ng Mac’s user 99.

More than a year now and What i can say it’s Wowww Linux came from very far, that’s impressive!
I have found all my alternative softwares that i have to used on Mac and even more, a stability and speed that the 2 proprietary OS(Win and Mac) would be jealous.

I Never looked back since, in love U-M, and on internet there are more than plenty of professional softwares ( I was and still “am” impressed by the number of stuffs for linux you can find, if you search for it …).
U-M went far above my expetations and needs (for example in video compositing I use Natron, it’s unbelievable the quality level of this software).
So, no dual boot, and if one day i’ll do it, it will be between Linux distro(although i don’t want to change) or a try about BSD.

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This has been my experience with Linux for many years now.

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hello,

I have a dual boot but don’t really dual boot.
Windows is only sleeping here for two things:
1- Firmware updates which requires windows
2- Hardware warranty purpose

In case of hardware trouble … constructor help support who decides if hardware must be returned only recognizes the original OS which is most of the time windows … their diagnostic processes requires windows to troubleshoot and decide.

Most of constructor simply close your case if you are saying … I’m running Linux say me what you want !

When warranty is over … windows is erased !

Kr

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Not a dual booter or ever have been nor ever intend to be. The only Microsoft based installations I have are on an old IBM think pad (t40) running Win XP and a 486 based Compac Contura laptop from the 80’s running MS DOS 6.21…Yup! I’m probably the only person left on the planet doing so…my crazy Low Tech obsession…just can’t shake it.

Actually produced an album on that 486 machine that was released internationally. I still use it to this day as a midi sequencer running Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold, a DOS based sequencer that is rock solid.

But I digress…Ubuntu Mate is my main OS now. Considered dual booting when I first came to learn of UM and was ready to install it along side windows but realized my need to have a Microsoft Windows product around as a back up was based on some unwarranted fear of not having a safety net. Breaking that dependency felt great.

The only way I would consider running a Microsoft product like Win 10 now would be as an offline single boot dedicated DAW. Professional Audio recording on Linux has a ways to go in comparison.

For everything else Linux is at least up to par if not better and faster than any MS or Apple product so no dual booting for this camper, it’s Ubuntu Mate all the way.

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I have DOS 5.0 installed as guest in VirtualBox. I boot it occasionally just for the memories. :slight_smile:

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Me this is an OS/2 Warp 3.0 …

Cool… DOS was pretty happening in those days. Had a crisis when windows 3.x came on the scene…what a mouse? You gotta be kidding we gotta click on stuff? Funny when I think back…

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I’m on a dual boot, although I haven’t really used Windows since Bionic came out…:slight_smile:
I’m thinking of deleting that partition very soon, the only reason I’m keeping it alive is for some academic purposes and software simulation and calculation stuff…

No need to dual-boot when you can use a VM.

I am dual booting W7 and UM 1804 as I experiment with UM. As mentioned in this thread OS's are tools. My main driver is Mac Mojave and W7. I run W10 on a third machine. My plan is to learn UM and eventually rid myself of any association with Microsoft and Google.. Thank you all for your efforts at making UM what it has become. Thanks also to all who contribute to this forum. I appreciate everyone's input.
Cheers!

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I just got a new notebook with Windows 10, It has Windows on a 256GB NVMe drive and a 1 TB SATA hard drive. I was planning to shrink the windows partition on the NVMe to install Mate 18.04 to it dual boot and then replace the SATA with an SSD and install Mate 16.04 for my Intel OpenVINO work. the idea was to ease into 18.04 which is not currently supported for OpenVINO.

The plan failed quickly. The 18.04 installer just wouldn't boot. The 16.04 installer booted but couldn't use the touchpad nor see the NVMe drive. Seems Western Digital makes an NVMe SSD that current Linux drivers can't use.

I was ready to box up and return the notebook to Costco, but then I discovered that pressing the ESC key when the ASUS logo popped up gave me a boot menu. So I booted the USB stick (after plugging in a USB mouse) and installed Mate 16.04 to the 1TB SATA SSD I'd purchased for the purpose and put the 1TB SATA drive that came with the system in a $9 external USB3-SATA case to use for backups. I was thrilled to see the touchpad worked after the installed system was booted.

Not as convenient as a grub boot menu but it works well. I used the BIOS setup to make the SATA SSD and Linux be the default boot option.

I'd like to figure out how to get Linux to r/w the ntfs NVMe drive so I can transfer my Python AI code to Windows10 for testing directly instead of via a USB stick. I had to keep Windows available for this purpose.

Symbolic links. Use gnome-disks (installable via gnnome-disk-utility package) if not there) and disable automatic options for the NVMe drive, choosing to mount on startup how you want it. Then you use ln to make symbolic links from the mounted partition your home and execute your Python code via that.

Easy stuff.

Simple, If only it worked!

Nothing I've tried has let either Mate16 or Mate18 installer see this particular Western Digital NVMe drive, both have worked for other NVMe drives in different systems.

After installation of Mate to an SATA SSD I still can't get any Linux tool to even detect the device. But it boots Windows10 just fine if I use the BIOS boot menu.

Could it be ExFAT? If the partition is ExFAT do in terminal sudo apt install exfat-* for exfat-utils and exfat-fuse. After you do that and caja -q, the media should begin to display usable partitions. If the media can't be seen at all then you may have to figure out how to make the M.2 slot show up; can't help you there.

If the caveat is DIMM.2 on some ASUS motherboards, then I really don't know; it could be showing up as a memory device and in need of a binary blob to make DIMM-bussed M.2 drives show up.

I have a desktop with WIN10 that is turned on monthly for the update and only used to help my computer-challenged friends and relatives. I did dual boot on my WIN7 desktop but support is coming to an end so I wiped it clean to install UM19.04 and a SSD. I installed WIN7 in a VM for the one remaining program that requires it. It's over, finished,kaput.
I have an old NEXUS7 with that ceased support in 2016 and understand there is a way to install Ubuntu on that.

https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/device/deb

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Excellent. Thank you