I'm looking for advice on how to set up my laptop for both personal use and gaming. I'd like to keep my internal drive for personal stuff and have a separate external HDD for gaming since I can't replace my old laptop. I'm also considering whether I should dual boot on my internal 500GB HDD or not. I'm still learning about Linux, and while I know an SSD would be ideal, my budget doesn't allow for that right now. Loading times aren't a huge concern for me either. Thanks for any help!
3 Answers
You might find this resources page really useful! Plus, check out the wiki for more tips about dual booting and Linux. Remember to take regular backups, experiment in a VM if you can, and make sure you understand commands before running them!
You can definitely dual boot using the same drive, but it comes with some risks. When you shrink the Windows partition to make space for Linux, you'll end up using the same boot partition. If Windows does an update that messes with this partition, you could find yourself unable to boot into Linux. It's simpler to have Linux on a separate drive, whether that's internal or external. This way, you won't have to worry about Windows overwriting anything. Just remember to back up your data in case anything goes wrong!
What OSs are you thinking of using? Just a heads up, the main downside of using HDDs for gaming is the longer loading times. It’s also a good idea to have a boot partition on each drive so you can fix any issues with one without totally losing access to your systems on the other. And don't worry about your long post—it’s great that you gave so much detail!
I’m aware of the loading times, and I’ll be using Kubuntu for my main OS and Bazzite for gaming.
I’ll be using Linux for both, so no Windows for me! I’ve been on Linux for two years now, and I'm not going back.