Dual boot help.

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I am seriously considering dual booting an Asus Windoes 10 1803 all-in-one desktop with Linux Mint.  Being akin to a half full glass re computers, i.e. half full when my decisions workout and half empty when they don’t, I am hesitant to charge into this.  I found this well done presentation and ask for opinions and help from Woody’s merry band of Mint users… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI47Jex9S6Q    Any advice/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.  KISS please – keep it short and simple! as I’m an ancient senior citizen.

 

 

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I’ve set up dual-boot setups on a number of PCs, and I’ve used it on all of my main PCs for a few years.  The Linux installers make setting up the dual-boot pretty easy, and it’s a setup I like a lot.

I don’t think there’s any reason to use a torrent client to download the Mint ISO.  It just adds complexity without any real benefit.  The browser can download a large file just fine!

The suggestion to use Rufus is a good one.  Be aware that they glossed over the bit where you have to tell Rufus whether to set up for legacy/BIOS/MBR boot or UEFI/GPT boot.  If it all works fine, no worries; if it won’t boot, you may need to change the option.

Otherwise, it seems like a pretty good guide.  It’s a very good idea to back up your Windows installation first, and certainly to back up your important data.  If you run into any issues, we will be happy to help you get it straightened out.

Of course, you don’t have to select Mint 18.2 or Cinnamon if you don’t want to.  Any Ubuntu-based distro is going to be very much like Mint as far as installation.

Good luck!

 

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I don’t think there’s any reason to use a torrent client to download the Mint ISO

 

Not to you, but to the Mint Team – you’ll be saving a lot on bandwidth costs. Even if not donating to them, by downloading Mint by Torrent you’ll be saving them money. And that helps them too!

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If you are looking to future proof and explore, try a virtual machine with Linux.

It can be frustrating as you will need to follow articles and forums, but it is rewarding.

I had a great adventure last week, now with options galore, setting up my machine with a dual boot of my old reliable 1709 with updates broken, and a new current 1803. In my 1709 I installed Virtualbox with Ubuntu and unlicensed Win 10 still at 1803.

Win 10 unlicensed, installed from the 1803 iso in a Woody’s post, runs exactly the same as my licensed versions.

With an 8700 on Cinebench, the Win 10 VM runs at 900 and the machine at 1300.

It is a time to explore and create options for the future.

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Ascaris thanks for the reply – much appreciated. Re” you have to tell Rufus whether to set up for legacy/BIOS/MBR boot or UEFI/GPT boot.”  could you please elaborate with definitive instruction on exactly what to do/select.  I’ll be grateful for any advice/suggestions.  I live in Bangkok and getting English speaking help on such matters is not easy.  OK I can speak,read and write the local language but quite often important points get muddled/lost in translation.

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The “legacy” vs “UEFI” boot setting is hardware-dependent. (And on a lot of systems, also firmware / BIOS version dependent.) And it’s not even just “works” vs “doesn’t work” – on some systems it’s “works differently” down to the hardware level. (Anything with a Thunderbolt connector, for example)

Short version: On new hardware you probably want to use UEFI mode, on old hardware you probably want to use legacy mode – but some models will differ.

See also https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#Why_doesnt_Rufus_create_a_Windows_installation_USB_that_can_be_booted_in_dual_BIOSUEFI_mode

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Cee Arr

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Cee Arr,

There are two partition schemes in use in the PC world.  The older of the two, MBR (for master boot record), is used mainly by PCs that have BIOS firmware.  BIOS is used on older PCs, like my Core 2 Duo laptop.  My Sandy Bridge desktop has a motherboard that is about 6-7 years old and it uses UEFI, so if your PC is older than that, it may use BIOS.  If it is that age or newer, it’s probably UEFI.  Sometimes you’ll see BIOS used as a generic term that means BIOS or UEFI– so a PC that uses UEFI may contain a boot message that says, “Press F2 to enter BIOS setup utility” even though it is not BIOS.  If you go into the setup utility and see the term “UEFI” anywhere in there, that’s what you’ve got.

UEFI mainly uses a partition scheme called GPT (GUID Partition Table, with GUID itself meaning Global Unique IDentifier).  UEFI also has a “legacy” or “compatibility” mode that allows it to pretend to be BIOS and boot from MBR partitions.

As mn- said, you will generally want to use the GPT partition scheme on UEFI systems and MBR on BIOS ones.  Each pair is meant to work together.

Why does this matter with Rufus?  Well, most of the .iso files used to make a bootable USB drive contain hybrid boot setups that can boot from either a BIOS PC expecting a MBR scheme or a UEFI one expecting a GPT scheme.  This makes it easy– just pop it into the PC and boot it, and it just works.  That’s how it works when I use Linux Mint’s USB writer utility to make a USB bootable drive.

Rufus, though, doesn’t do that by default.  The author of the program seems to think that by only writing either a GPT/UEFI bootable or a MBR/BIOS bootable helps people ensure they start in the correct mode.  I think it’s a bizarre and nonsensical argument, but the author doesn’t agree.

If you just follow the directions as the video presents them and you are able to boot into the live session successfully, you’re probably fine.  If it refuses to boot, though, it could be that the boot configuration of the USB drive does not match what the PC expects.  In that case, you will need to set the option in Rufus to match the BIOS or UEFI type of your PC.  Here’s a screenshot of the option in Rufus 3.1.  Note the dropdown in the upper-left portion of the screen (colored in blue) where it gives the option of partition scheme GPT or MBR.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Rufus, though, doesn’t do that by default. The author of the program seems to think that by only writing either a GPT/UEFI bootable or a MBR/BIOS bootable helps people ensure they start in the correct mode. I think it’s a bizarre and nonsensical argument, but the author doesn’t agree.

Having seen some of the problems that can come from relying on factory defaults on this – it’s sometimes necessary to enforce correct boot mode that way. (Laptop that defaults to legacy mode but requires UEFI mode to work correctly with the dock, for example.)

Also hybrid boot can cause weird issues on some systems, almost all of them old models – technically it’s almost always a firmware bug in my opinion but on most of the affected models there’s no fix available.

And, well, Rufus is sort of an advanced tool so you could make the case that it can require knowing things like that. Besides, making a hybrid boot is significantly more complicated anyway, so if the tool is useful without that capability…

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Cee Arr

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Yes, I’ve seen hybrid boot sticks fail to boot too.  It would be understandable if Rufus said that in the event that the hybrid boot fails, you have the option of specifying a single boot type, but that’s not what it does.  It simply refuses to do the hybrid boot by default, even if that is what is specified in the .iso, and in cases like this one where the person we are trying to help isn’t a techie type, it just introduces another layer of complexity and confusion that doesn’t need to be there.

In most cases, the hybrid bootloader will work fine, and that’s why that is the configuration that is already specified by the .iso images for Windows and Linux (in all the flavors I have used) alike.  Most people will be able to use that and not even need to know whether they have UEFI or BIOS.

From the author’s point of view, the user knows which type of partition scheme he wants, and he will create the .iso to reflect that.  If the .iso fails to boot, it means he’s got the thing in the wrong mode, and it means that he was about to install an OS in a mode he didn’t intend (if the USB device boots in MBR mode, Windows will always then install in MBR mode.  Linux is probably more flexible, but I haven’t tried this, so that’s a guess).

That said, though, Rufus is still a great tool and I used it exclusively for my Windows .iso writing needs.  It’s just a little quirky in the UI.

As far as Rufus being a more advanced tool, and certainly that is true.  Even so, it is capable of creating a hybrid boot setup: just press ALT-E from the main dialog and the option will unlock.  That’s even more bizarre– an advanced tool having an advanced feature that also happens to be the one most suited to beginners that can’t be accessed via the GUI until you enter a keystroke that you would never know about unless you had done some reading.   Certainly, having a secret key combo like that is against every UI guideline out there.  Even though I know it’s there, I have still had to look it up a couple of times when I didn’t remember exactly which key combo it was.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Usually it is recommended to go to your EUFI (or ‘BIOS’) and disable Fast Boot, Linux generally doesn’t like this.

You can also disable Secure Boot. Even if you disable it, Windows should boot fine anyway.

I’m sorry but I cannot tell you how to enter your EUFI setup, there is no standard about entering it or creating menus while creating a computer. You’ll have to find it yourself or ask your manufacturer. Windows (10?) has some way of booting to it. Google is your friend here.

GPT is recommended, yes – and much more practical because it’s not limited to the 4 primary partitions – but not mandatory.

A VM is a good solution but you’ll lose some performance, and you won’t be sure how supported is your hardware. If you install it on bare metal, Grub – the Linux boot loader will be installed and boot fine between Windows and Linux. Make sure you install in the drive’s boot sector and not in a partition (i.e. /dev/sda and not /dev/sda1)

With me, on my new laptop and even with Secure Boot disabled, Linux was not booting. It turned out that by mistake a legacy BIOS Grub was installed. I had to chroot into my installed Linux system and manually install grub-efi, the EUFI verson of Grub.

Ah, EUFI needs a small FAT partition (~100MB) on your disk so it records the authenticated keys there. I believe Windows has already this partition by default and Linux can make use of it.

 

Sorry if too much info here. This is a somewhat complex thing and it can take you some time and frustration fighting to get it to work. Your Linux distro has forums to help you on that, much better than this generic one.

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Question…are you planning to dual boot on one hard drive?

You can do that, but my preference for desktops is to add a second hard drive (you can get an inexpensive SSD), and dedicate that to Linux. There are some advantages to that, since you can still boot into Linux if your Windows hard drive is having issues (and easily copy over data from the Windows drive to the Linux drive). It also makes it easier to re-install Windows or re-install/upgrade Linux, as you don’t have to worry about the partitions.

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Cee Arr

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Hello mn-, many thanks for your replys.  An additional piece of information to throw into the pot before I proceed. Also more computer knowledge for my ageing brain.  I’ll post my progres here as I muddle along.  Sincere thanks.

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Hello again Ascaris, you certainly answered my quetion big time.  Easy language and totally understandable.  A major step forward for me.  My desktop is 8 months old so I guess that answers many of the available options. F2 takes me to the BIOS UEFI on my Asus.  Another kind “Ask Woodyite” suggested using a second SSD drive to install Linux. This has some merit to me but I’ll do some more homework on this and proceed slowly.  Just admired your mini computer tutorial.  Another layer of knowledge for a senior citizen.  I will proceed slowly and update my progress on this page. If you are ever in my neck of the woods you are on for a baked dinner.  A million thanks.  Chris R.

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Ascaris

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Hello johnf.  A good suggestion I had not considered.  I need to investigate further.  Not having to dual boot with MS Windows 10 has considerable merit to me.  Yes I had thought to use the hard drive on my desktop.  I will rethink this. Many thanks.

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