Hey everyone! I'm new to the world of Linux and I'm looking to dual boot Windows 11 with Linux Mint Cinnamon. My goal is to gradually move away from Windows, and I think Cinnamon will be a good starting point for that. Most of my usage will revolve around gaming and watching YouTube videos, though I also do some video editing and stream occasionally. The only software I plan to keep on Windows is Valorant, since its anti-cheat is kernel-level and doesn't work with Linux. I'm pretty sure everything else I need is compatible with Linux.
I have a setup of 5 hard drives: one 500GB, three 1TB, and one 2TB drive. My plan is to keep the 500GB drive for Windows (where it's currently installed) and use the other drives for Linux. Here are a few questions I have:
1. Does my setup sound fine?
2. What should I consider when dual booting? I've heard Windows can complicate things.
3. How can I wipe the drives for Linux before installation? Will the installer take care of that?
4. Any compatibility issues I should know regarding my NAS running Windows 10?
5. Is there a way to prevent Windows and Linux from accessing each other's drives? Is that a concern?
I plan to create a USB boot drive to test Mint first before fully switching. My specs are:
- GPU: 3060Ti
- CPU: Intel 12700K
- RAM: 32GB DDR4
Let me know if you need more details!
3 Answers
1. First off, make sure your drives are SSDs, as booting from HDD can be super slow, even with Linux. 2. Make sure to create an EFI partition for your Linux drive, that should set you up nicely. 3. During the Linux installation, you can choose which drive to install and it will wipe that one for you. Just manage the other drives with a partition manager in Linux, or format them as exFAT if you plan to use them with both OSes. 4. As for the NAS, not too sure about that one. 5. You can easily turn off auto-mount for drives in Linux to prevent any accidental access. Windows will typically ignore drives formatted with Linux file systems unless you tell it to read them, which it usually won't do anyway.
Make sure to separate your Windows and Linux files across different drives. Linux doesn't play nice with NTFS and vice versa with EXT4 for Windows, so keeping them apart will save you headaches later!
Just a heads up: Windows can break the Linux bootloader after updates, so make sure you know how to fix that if it happens. While Windows can't read EXT4, Linux can access NTFS. So you'll want to format your Linux OS drive to EXT4, and you'll have tools on the live USB to help with that.
So just to confirm, I'll format my Linux drive to EXT4, physically remove the Windows drive during installation, then install Linux on the EXT4 drive, and finally put the Windows drive back in and set the boot order, right? That sounds manageable.
Got it! When you mention the second drive, do you mean the Linux boot drive or the Windows boot drive?