I gave up dual booting from the same hard drive after some Windows Updates messed up my setup twice. If you really _have_ to dual boot, consider having each OS on a seperate physical hard drive and use the UEFI boot menu to choose which OS you'd like to use. Much safer. I think you should have mentioned this possible snare. Anyways, I came to the conclusion that I can do everything I need to do in Linux and if I would really need one application that requires Windows, I prefer to run it in a VM. But in the recent two years there's no Windows application left that I need, so my Windows VMs are only collecting virtual dust... Mind you, I don't talk about gaming! I'm talking about getting work done.
You meed to change grub2 to boot to the last used os. You put the parameter in the grub2 config file. So when you do a os update the rebooting will be to the os your updating. That avoid the corruption
I tried that using WinCrap in a VM but when I really needed both the graphics card and accelerators to work together it's was pretty much impossible a few years ago in linux but now with LookingGlass moving along, it might be possible to dump Wincrap altogether. So I'm still using bios boot select for when I need WinCrap for certain jobs.
I use separate drives for my installs and Windows still stopped working from grub. It's fine, though. I use Windows so rarely, it doesn't bother me to just boot it from bios.
Tried building a dual boot Mint/Win11 on my wife's laptop. Got into a live session once, fine. But: ONCE. When I tried to install Mint, Win11 did [something], and I am not entirely sure what -- the USB stick simply would no longer boot. Disabled secure boot etc, but no chop. I used _the_same_ usb stick to install Mint on a (different) Win10 system and it's running just fine now. Nothing wrong with the flash drive. I handed that little HP machine with Win 11 back to my wife, since that's what she is using anyway. Great if it works for you, but beware Win 11, I think.
That's a nice guide but should also show people how to remove linux again, fix the windows boot loader and add partition space back. That's the more complicated part some will struggle. That's why it's always better to do this on separate drives or just use virtual machines.
That would be helpful information for sure. It would also be nice to know how to safely remove Windows if a user decides they no longer need it and want to use Linux full time. I recently set up a Windows 10 and Fedora dual boot.
I'd strongly agree. If you don't know how boot loaders work, you are just asking for trouble. MSFT has been known to issue an up date that borks Linux. It HAS happened, guys.
I would like to see a followup video, or maybe two, showing how to go from dual boot to 100% linux or 100% windows without restting all my settings and files..
That depends a bit on what hardware you have. In my case an M.2 SATA SSD and a larger HDD. If you want both OSes to benefit from being on the faster drive then dual-boot is a good option. And in either a twin-disk or dual-boot setup, Linux has the advantage of being able to mount your Windows disk or partition so that all of your data is accessible.
Nice video again👍👏 About EFI partitions and bootmanager: Not exactly the subject of today, but i cannot heartly enough recommend REFIND: sudo apt install refind. Its an efi bootmanager with a nice interface and lets you boot into usb and firmware. It also finds bootable linux kernels on the root partition in case your grub doesnt work anymore. Very handy, use it since years! For regular fresh installs on same harddisk as windows i recommend to give linux a second large (at least 2 - 3 Gb) EFI partition at the end of the disk. Some distros like Pop OS require that.
Great video, as always. I would just like to point out to everyone that when selecting how much space to give to Windows vs linux, you will be able to access your windows files from within Mint but when booted into Windows you can not access your files from the Mint partition(at least not without special software to mount the ext4 partition.)
@@dontmindbeingblindd I have used a program called EXT2FSD. It allows you to assign a drive letter to the ext4 partition. I haven't used it in a long time so not sure if anything has changed over the years. Might be safer to log into linux and copy what you need to the windows partition.
@@PS_Tube Would that also work with a data partition formatted to ReFS? I use Windows for Workstations, which suppports ReFS, and I used that for my data drive.
After I choose boot into Linux mint I get a USB platform failed error when booting into Linux it does load and loads windows as well. Just gives me this error... 🤔
Take the Windows hard drive out, place a new one in. Install Linux. Place the Win hard drive in. Now you can choose in the Bios menue with system to boot. No danger of destroying one of the two systems.
I'm curious if Mint will survive the first time you have to do one of the more involved feature updates from Windows 11. That was an issue a few years ago with dual-boot systems.
thanks jay... though found hard part is afterwards :) .... 1) how to change default grub choice to windows 2) how to repair system when windows repair/upgrade messed everything up
Be careful; if you have a computer from late 2022 or later, you'll need to use the Edge ISO as computers newer than that may not boot Linux Mint because of the super old kernel on the non Edge ISO. Great video though!
I dual boot Linux Mint in a 2023 computer without issue. New computer will still boot into standard Linux Mint, but some may have issue with the newer hardware like bluetooth wifi or speaker. If you have issue with standard Mint, then you can try the Edge Mint.
@@esphilee It depends on how new the CPU and/or GPU is. If it is very new, it may not even make it past the bootloader screen. And the Edge ISO is Cinnamon only; there are no MATE or Xfce options.
@@cameronbosch1213 from my experience, they all boot up. Some with issue. Probably some may not boot, but I have not experience that. The last computer I bought was end of last year, I had my Linux installed with the standard edition. EDGE is something new.
@esphilee Unfortunately, the extremely old 5.15 kernel in Linux Mint is very out of date, even more so than the 6.1 kernel in Debian, which is actually a huge update because of the Rust support among many other improvements. I saw an issue where some 2021 AMD Ryzen 5000 laptops wouldn't boot a kernel from late 2020 (Ubuntu 20.10) and another where the keyboard was basically unusable (any key press on the keyboard would cause the laptop to ask to go to sleep). Especially given that Linux first hardware isn't very competitive at the moment, especially outside of the EU, having these "beginner-focused" distros ship ancient kernels certain isn't going to help bug reports...
@@cameronbosch1213 , to be fair, it is logical that some new notebooks would have issue. Perhaps I was lucky, the worst experience I had was wifi and internal speaker not working. Maybe it comes down to compromising between stability and bleeding *edge* . I personally ask my new friends to test the standard Cinnamon first in Live Mode. If it works, install it. If it doesn’t, try the Edge version. I am sure that is the reason why sometimes we get advice to install Linux in older PC if anyone wants to try out or Learn Linux.
This is completely wrong. No one should have Linux and Windows on the same disk/harddrive, and let Grub boot Windows. If you can’t have 2 physical drives in the machine, don’t dual boot. I know it works, but it’s stupid to take the chance and loose both Windows and Linux, when Grub (or the ssd) fails in the future. The only way is to install Windows on drive 1, and then take it out and install Linux on drive 2, so that Grub doesn’t take over Windows boot
This way is the duel boot prompt automatic at start up? Also I'm using a mini PC and adding a SSD, is it best to arrange a partition for Mint on the SSD. That way I could use the rest of the SSD for data, music and videos, for both the win11 and Linux Mint. Am I correct here?
Linux Mint does allow secure boot but I highly suggest against using secure boot with it as it can be temperamental at times along side with WinCrap on the same drive. Put Mint on another drive or install Mint first then WinCrap.
Afaik since windows normally treats hw clock value as local time, unlike linux, which assumes hw clock returns UTC, you possibly should tweak one of the OS to change it default behavior.
Thanks Jay! It looks like a straight forward process. Another post here mentions using the Edge ISO for Mint in newer computers. That may prevent some headaches.
Thank you for your amazing work! You are a legend and I'm sure your Videos will be very important to a lot of people, when Windows 10 is EOL in 2025! I already switched last year.
Well, because of you I'm triple booting now. 2 drives, three OS's. Windows 11 Pro, MX 23.3 KDE, and Kubuntu 23.10. Tried Mint. Not for me. I may install it for my mom though because it's that easy! By the way, I did wreck grub by deleting the Mint Partition instead of installing over it. Yeah, stupid, but I learned a lot and all 3 OS's work great! Thanks for the great video. Looking forward to more.
Not a good idea for new users. Swap out the drives, or get a 2nd machine. Far too much can go wrong, especially if you don't know about boot loaders and how they work. I certainly would not recommend a dual boot to newbies. Unfortunately, some Distros make it far too easy. Just think carefully. Reading the comments below, I see problems ahead for a lot of people. Need to make video to get out of these messes Jay!
Hrmn my method of a dual boot is I have Wincrap and Gentoo on separate drives but no boot loader. I use the quick bios drive select key for when I need wincrap same as he is selecting the Linux mint usb drive in the beginning of this video. Quick word of advice is WinCrap and Linux on the same drive it's best to have Linux installed first then Wincrap. If Wincrap is first it has great potential to really screw up the EFI boot partition with WinCrap updates. To stop that...protect your uefi/bios with a password.
GRUB is super ugly... I can't believe no one bother to make easily installable modern boot manager and its 2024... Yeah can be done with themes but thats not the point. Good job for vid, typical dual boot setup
GRUB is badly designed more ways too. It's needlessly jank in general. For example, if you boot on a conflicting resolution, the menu becomes very laggy.
@@NeftisIsHerethis has been my major Linux complaint. There are probably thousands of developers making hundreds of distros, rather than coming together to make one great distro to put windows down like Ole Yeller. “I like Mint but I think the desktop should be this way and mounting a USB should be this way, and I want the network to setup like this…” So we get a Mint fork, and another, and another ubuntu and another Arch and another Fedora… it never stops. Then a plethora of videos stating this one is best or that one sux, and no one knows what or whom to believe. Linux is a giant cluster hump of a mess in a burning dumpster fire.
Which boot manager is the computer using, GRUB, or Windows boot manager? I've watched a few videos on this subject, and they say that GRUB is prone to corruption, so dual booting with two separate drives, is more reliable. That being said, I guess that can't be done on a laptop.
People say that all the time about windows boot loader as well Either boot letter could be corrupte. none is more secure than the other What you should be focused on is insuring that whatever Linux distribution you install is installed into a separate. S s d versus what windows already lives in and while the windows drive is completely disconnected. This way, grub. I want gets installed into the s h d in which that distribution will live in instead of the same drive that the windows boot loader lives in. Separate lives equal Happier lives
Personally I had some problems with dual booting from same HDD. So I currently use three separate HDDs for my dual boot. Windows on sda, Ubuntu LTS on sdb, same install order and third HDD as a shared storage between both systems. One thing to note is in Ubuntu installation you can choose where to install GRUB, but with my setup it's better to not change it, which by default is going to be installed on sda. I don't use secure boot or encryption. At least with secure boot I had problems running Ubuntu. System time keeps conflicting between both systems, which is fixable. One thing that remain problematic for me is reinstallation. Reinstalling Ubuntu is no problem, as it will rewrite GRUB. But if you reinstall Windows, you can no longer load Ubuntu. I guess there is ways to reinstall GRUB, but I couldn't do it.
Indeed I always tell new Linux users... Install whatever distribution you want into a separate s. Yes. D. A k not the one that windows already lives in Otherwise, you're begging for a rabbit hole level of plethora of problems. To deal with Not to mention it makes backing up and restoring either operating system world that much more complicated to deal with.
Bitlocker is a big issue with dual booting. Disable it before installing to avoid a headache, but even if you restart it after install it will demand the recovery key every time you try to chainload the Windows Boot Manager through Grub. The only way I've found to get around this is to directly boot Windows through the UEFI boot menu. Don't try to boot it through Grub.
Great video on how install Linuxmint alongside Windows. I've done everything in this video, but when I boot my computer it only boots to Linux and doesn't give me a boot option. Any suggestions on what the problem is and how to fix it?
Thanks Jay! That was simple and straight forward. Do I have to follow the same steps if I want to dual boot Linux and other Linux distro? e.g Mint and Garuda. If the answer is no, in future, can you be so kind and make a video that shows how to dual boot different Linux distros.
Thanks for another great video Jay. The production quailty is great! Yes, you were able to successfully create a dual boot between Windows 11 and Linux Mint. The question is will Windows 11 updates cause any problems or break the boot loader? That's the main downside of dual booting. In my opinion it would be better to run Windows 11 as a virtual machine using QEMU and Virt Manager.
Is it possible to setup a dual boot for two Operating systems installed on separate hard drives? I have a system like this but never got the option to setup a boot manager so I always have to go into the Boot menu to select which OS I want to boot.
I actually want to do exactly what you have done. I'd prefer using the Boot menu.. keeping both instances totally independent of each other. I recently purchased a Dell XPS15 9530 that has a second m.2 slot. I want to install Mint DE6 on the second m.2 and use the BIOS Boot Menu (F12 on Dell) to select the boot OS. Maybe Jay will considering doing such a video.
last week i tried to triple boot(windows, debian, arch) on 3 seprate ssds and fail after a short time. i dont know why those conflict with each other and disapear from boot menu. there are shady things on this topic which i dont know.
If you use the same EFI partition you can install any OS on a separate drive, and then using Linux GRUB populate your menu to choose what you want to boot. Keep in mind Windows will install its EFI loader on the first available partition, so make sure there is only one, or GRUB might not find it.
I think a good follow up video to this video would be how to fix things when Microsoft/Windows 11 messes with the EFI partition from an update or whatever and blanks grub so Linux won't boot anymore. This happened to me recently. I haven't ever run into this issue, but I'm assuming I should just be able to boot from my Linux Mint USB open terminal and sudo grub-install? 🤷♂ EDIT: I saw a video where the person was using a dell laptop like I am and they went into the UEFI and added the boot option from EFI folder. I did the same and now Grub is default again.
Your video is easy to understand... I tried Linux Mint, but the GUI is full of bugs... The most simple features didn't work and I was forced to reboot half a dozen times before I gave up.
That's a lot cleaner dual boot set up than I'm used to. I've always had to do my own resizing and repartitioning which is why I've avoided it like the plague for a long time. I did recently set up dual boot between Windows and Pop!_OS and it was no where near as clean. I now have two UEFI partitions and have to select Windows from the BIOS. A bit of a pain and I'm sure that I could consolidate the UEFI partitions if I try hard and research lots, but I seldom want Windows anyway so ... meh.
I know 2 ways to do it. 1) Get a new Hard disk. Remove the Window Hard disk before you install Linux in the new hard disk. Place the windows Hard disk back. Then use BIOS to set the default boot drive. You can enter the bios boot menu if you want to use the none default Os. But if you update the Kernel, sometimes the Grub may come back to life after the kernel update, And ruin your day. 2) you can meddle with the Grub configuration file, to hide the Grub manual, and also over-ride the waiting time to 0.0 so the Grub will boot into default OS immediately. Remember to set it to 0.0 not just 0 You can google it. I forgot the detail of the actual configuration file.
Greetings. Very quick question, please Only an intermediate pc user here. Dual-booting/ booting from USB, on my old laptop, which has more utility/ ease of operation/ stability/ and apps ? Chrome OS/ Chrome OS Flex, or Linux? Thank you very very much!( have been asking around for 2 weeks and no response from any channel.
Good video. In my case, I have a notebook with windows 10 as the only operating system, with 1x SSD for the OS (256 GB) and 1x 1TB HDD for data. I would like to install Mint in dual boot mode (I have 80GB reserved space on the SSD for root and swap) and I imagine that the home partition has to be installed on the HDD. Is it necessary in this case to format a space on the HDD for /home, and if so, can this space be accessed from Windows?
I followed this. Windows doesn't see the linux partition / thinks it has the whole harddrive. So, I have just being avoiding the windows boot. Any suggestions to make windows see (and not try to write to) the linux partitions?
Unfortunately you can't do this on a recently refurbished HP office PC with HP Secure Start. You can press as many buttons as you want but you're not going to find a Bios Boot Selection Mode.
Thanks for this video! I don't really want Win 11 at all, but I am thinking about dual booting until I get Mint setup the way I want. What is the the min SSD space (out of 512G) you would recommend for this?
Great video. Do you have a video that shows what to do if you don't see the boot option for the USB? I'm told it's because I don't have a UEFI or legacy mode on this new computer. How would I just wipe the hard drive and install Linux?
if you want to do this easily without any issues start by installing Ventoy.If you are on windows,press shift+restart,boot from the usb and stat linux without disable secure boot in BIOS
What a gret video, and like in 1 day after i was going to install Linux Mint with windows 11, the video worked great. I just gave Linux mint 150GB , i hope it is enough. Can i resize again later if i want more/less ? Edit: I am planning to run Mint as my daily driver, but i am not sure yet, so i am testing it out.
think this could use some work, especially using Windows 11 as an example. No mention of secure boot or bit locker issues , no warnings of Windows update trashing grub , no mention of how to order grub choice so the no action default is the one you want . This guide would only work on older machines that didn't come installed with windows 11 by default.
I have the same concerns about Secure Boot and the possible risk of trashing grub.. Also Bitllocker. I have a Dell XPS15 9530 that has a second m.2 slot. I want to install Mint DE6 on the second m.2 and use the BIOS Boot Menu (F12 on Dell) to select the boot OS. Maybe Jay will considering doing such a video.
Here's a better idea than double booting that keep MS out of it! I recently bought this WI-6 Pro Mini PC, Intel 12th N100(3.4GHz) Mini Desktop Computer for $158. It works GREAT!. I actually set it up as dual boot for Windows and Mint, however after seeing the problem MS just caused, I had a better idea. Buy a mini pc (its 4 inches x 4 inches x 1 inch) and a monitor keyboard switch like the KVM switch on Amazon. There are multiple choices, but they run as low as $22. Then instead of dual booting, you just hit a button to switch between Windows and Linux.
@Learn Linux TV - This is a great example of a simple dual boot , however, I'm currently using LM and want to keep my files/setup etc. How do I secure my current system and restore it once I have Win11 installed as per your video?
At 8.30 in the video u say I will wipe out the hard drive!! Does that mean ALL files in my hard drive will be emptied after partition or just those in space I want Linux in??
I use virt-manager to boot Windows as a VM inside linux. And i can even dual-boot the exact same Windows installation. Windows just needs it's own physical disk that you pass to virt-manager where you then install Windows with virtio drivers for best performance. Then it should be possible to also boot it native. And in virt-manager add a vTPM module that just forwards to the physical TPM.
Will this work if I use an external ssd after the new windows update that seem to miss up alot of the duel boots? I was thinking of changing the boot order to the external drive first and windows 11 after that way if I unplug the drive it would boot straight into windows or so I hope.
Thaks for the great videos in easy-to-understand language! I have Win 11 and Linux Mint dual boot on the same NVMe drive. I upgraded my 1 TB to a 2 TB and cloned the drive. However, I can't boot into Mint. I need to make Mint bootable. Do you have any ideas? I really don't want to reinstall Mint if I don't have to.
3:20 If you find that following the precise instructions here doesn't get you a boogible. Lenox mint installation thumb drive in the end. You may need to first format that thumb drive to fat 32
Not sure if i did something wrong, but i have installed windows 10 and pop os and i have the bios priority set to boot pop but the pc doesn't come up with a screen to boot to windows. they are on different dives if that matters
Still on Windows 10 here. Something occurs to me and I wish I were well versed underneath the operating systems. A few years older video said that, Windows 11 requiring all kinds of security crap and the TPM thing would become an issue in the scenario where you wanted to dual boot with Windows 11. Is this still current or was it ever current?
Good video, but for one important omission. Users need to be told to turn off Windows Bitlocker before the installation of Linux. I do not know where my Bitlocker code is and so I ended up making a mess of things. The machine I tried this on is now no longer bootable from either the HD or from a USB drive. I get some kind of a strange boot error message. Thankfully, said machine is not a primary machine, but I will need to seen someone who can help unravel the deep gash I have created.
Thank you for the great video. I'm sure you have been asked this before, can one install windows after linux in dual boot. I already have mint on my desktop as well as ubuntu. Or will I have to install win first? Also Zoom does not see my microphone on mint or ubuntu, is there a simple solution? I have had to use my win for Zoom meetings, and I'm really not a fan of 'MS'
Thanx for the video. It worked well until Mint did the updates and then the video got trashed. looked like and old analog TV screen, snow . Reinstalled Mint again and the same thing after the updates this time I went thru the updates to see if there were any video driver updates and anything that looked like one was unchecked. No difference. I suspect any OS based on Ubuntu may have a same issue. Now trying to figure out haw to restore the main boot back to Windows. First time I've tried this on a laptop and most like last. I've had 100% success rate with desktops.
I followed the same process to update Mint but Windows was legacy boot and Linux installed on uefi, so Grub is not booting into Windows which I'm trying to fix
Dual-Boot is NOT a good idea! If Windoz fails, and you have to re-install; Linux is their, but you can't get to it without reinstalling it again. That's why VirtualBox or VMWare is the better choice. There are plenty of YT's that back this up!
Not really. You will not have the issue if you Dual boot with 2 separate drives. It depends on your need. Virtual Box and VM has it’s short coming, you cannot have access to the full potential of your hardware resources. If you don’t need to run them at the same time, it is probably best to dual boot, but with 2 separate drives.
My Dell optiplex 9030 just won't install Linux 21 alongside win11. I get to the part where it should show unmount partitions, but it's not shown, instead I'm onto the installation screen that does not show the existing windows 11 os. It worked ok on my later Dell optiplex 9060, but not this optiplex 9030. Any suggestions please?
Thanks, I tried all variations and each time it corrupted my windows boot file. The Linux install never recognised there was a windows boot system, so I never saw the install alongside windows. I have a dual boot on my later Dell 9060 so I'm gonna put this down to a "not possible" on the older machine.
@@regscheuber1083 I don’t know… mine is on a 9020. Mint 22 along side win 11 pro. Didn’t work until I made sure the Mint usb install disk was booting up legacy. Win was already booting legacy.
Thank you for this. I'm dissatisfied with Windows 11, but I'd like to keep it so I can access my Steam library. For everything else, it's "goodbye Windows!"
Garuda Linux is the best gamer friendly distro I’ve run across. It is near perfect for a Linux noob as it has a GUI to set up Steam, Lutis, Bottles, etc…. Garuda also has twenty plus emulators that can be set up with just a few clicks. That said, one should learn to install and configure these themselves at some point so one knows how to deal with any issues that may arise. However, for speed of setup and ease of use, Garuda has been a great distro for me to test running my favorite MMO in Bottles.
It doesn't matter which one you install first as long as you are. Installing each type of operating system into a separate SSD and while installing one that the other. S s d is not connected whatsoever This is a much safer version of dual booting And you can still just as easily temporarily boot to the opposite SSD. If your PC are mother board is a modern enough with a simple f. Number hot key
