Dual boot Linux and Windows 11 Pro

[Beerislife]

Well, that worked just as I expected!

I'm not sure if it's still relevant but in the past Windows insisted on being on the first drive or partition on a system.

So, with that in mind I booted into the PC BIOS and set the HDD Caddie as the first boot device and the onboard NVMe SSD was moved down to second place.

I clicked on the NVMe entry and set it to disabled and restarted the machine.

Since there were no bootable drives it went straight to the Beelink Windows Recovery USB Media.

First I removed the LAN cable so Windows would set up a local account only!

I let Windows install and set it up with my login details and restarted the machine to the BIOS.

I re-enabled the NVMe SSD entry and rebooted. After the machine got to the Beelink logo I hit F12 and was presented with my two drives to choose from!

Both boot perfectly normally.

I prefer this setup because Linux GRUB knows nothing of Windows and Windows Boot Loader knows nothing of KDE Neon!

I deserve a beer!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/seGwENNPyCWBgDhi6

[Snowhog]

Here you go!

[jlittle]

Both boot perfectly normally.

I deserve a beer!

Surely.

I prefer this setup because Linux GRUB knows nothing of Windows and Windows Boot Loader knows nothing of KDE Neon!

I don't see advantages in that. You've got two boot loaders to maintain rather than one. And I distrust the Windows one.

On my work laptop I used to dual boot, but for reasons of space I changed to running Windows in a qemu/kvm and I've found that it saves a lot of time being able to have both OSs running together. My work has since gone almost all in on Office 365 and it's working out well so far. So, provided that you don't have spplications or games that have problems in a VM you might consider the VM approach.

[Schwarzer Kater]

I don't trust the Windows boot loader either, but since UEFI the situation certainly has become a bit better even if you install them on the same drive.

One solution for one Linux and one Windows system on the same computer with two seperate drives can be to

• disable the drive (physically or in UEFI) you are currently not installing the system on during installation (this certainly does not hurt, especially if the Linux installer does not acknowledge your choice of /boot/efi when e.g. choosing partitions manually with multiple drives, as many of them don't do!)
• this way install Linux and Windows on two seperate drives with an own EFI partition on each of them
• afterwards enable both drives again (physically or in UEFI) and make the drive with Linux the primary one in the motherboard's UEFI and
• set GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false on the Linux side in /etc/boot/grub (make a backup of this system file first) and sudo update-grub

Now GRUB provides the possibility to boot into both systems and their boot loader files are kept seperately.

This method can also be used for two Linux installations on two seperate drives, of course (setting GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false for the primary Linux system and if desired GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true for the secondary one afterwards can be one simple way to handle GRUB).
-> If one of the two Linux systems uses btrfs as a file system you will have to make this Linux the primary system / choose its drive as the primary one in UEFI - otherwise this simple method will not work in most cases.

PS: jlittle: I think I have observed that a virtual Windows machine runs best in VMWare (Player), which is fiddly to install and proprietary software of course - but I will do some more testing during the coming months.

[claydoh]

I have had a Windows update reset the BIOS boot order more than once. A BIOS update can change the setting as well.
Linux can do this too, of course, via efibootmgr.
I *think* Linux distros use this tool to set the boot order during an install, but I am not positive which ones do. I haven't set up a dual boot in a few years now, at least with Windows, but I could swear that the last time I did, installing Linux changed the boot order for me.
I don't have any dual boot setups at all, currently.

Just something to be aware of. Having separate drives and separate EFI partitions for boot loader files won't matter.

[Schwarzer Kater]

You are absolutely right, this still could happen - but this can be easy to fix: just go into your UEFI and change back the boot order and/or use efibootmgr.

[Beerislife]

I've reset the NVMe drive with Linux back to the first drive in the BIOS and I can select which drive to boot from Grub, not really what I wanted but it seems to be working.
I think I've only booted Windows once since I installed it and that was to install Firefox and Thunderbird. I may end up wiping it again!

I'm waiting for a "You need Windows" case to appear but I don't think it will!

Right, I'm off for a couple of beers before work!