Do linux distros like manjaro and mint play well with dual-booting?

Non-technical Questions
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1

Hi, I didn’t ever try to install linux alongside windows10 with dual-boot. Windows can destroy grub boot-loqder on it’s updates. Even triyng to repair it sucks. It can remove or modify important files on the linux drive. Dual-booting can not only break the linux syatem but windows itself too.

Now i wonder if Linux is dual-boot friendly or not. If it is, then I would mint or popos alongside manjaro. Feel free to ask for more info if needed. :wink:

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2

Have been dual booting windows 10 and manjaro xfce for some time now, works great…
There are excellent guides on youtube on this , just search for window manjaro dual boot.

4

How do windows updates behave? Because it sometimes removes grub bootloader.

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5

I have not seen that yet in the four months that I use this setup, but I keep a bootable USB around for when that happens.

6

Dual boot since 3 years:
-Manjaro KDE
-Manjaro KDE (other user, apps,…)

Not a single problem.

7

They can be multiboot friendly if you know what you are doing. Many distros have difficulty detecting Manjaro, but Manjaro can detect most other distros, so use Manjaros grub for dual booting. Alternatively let every distro have their own grub and use rEFInd to switch between them at boot.

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8

I find using the Motherboards Boot Menu works well for this. Just press Fn to boot the Menu and select which Drive you want to boot from.

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9

If you have multiple drives and good motherboard, this is a good option.

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10

Yes, I have that option on my BIOS menu, but is it better or worse than grub or systemd-boot?

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11

For me, Windows will always be on a separate drive and not go near GRUB. I set Manjaro as the first boot option in BIOS, and BIOS Fn into Windows if I need it. I don’t want to get into EFI profiles, or whatever they are, so that is a good solution for me.

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12

The advantage is that keeping the installations on different drives helps you avoid them messing with each other.

13

Question.

I have heard tell also of other distros not seeing manjaro. Why exactly is that?

Manjaro definitely feels like a distro that defies the convention.

Cheers

14

I use rEFInd personally. I don’t even have grub installed. I have it installed in the same partition as the Windows bootloader (FAT32, 100MB partition).

Never had issues with having Windows and 6 other distros installed at the same time.

rEFInd is amazing because it scans for all available kernels and boots on your computer at startup. Multi-booting with grub can be more complicated imo.

and you can make rEFInd look really pretty :smiley:

15

Can i lock a certain drive to a certain os? Like windows can’t touch the linux drive and vice-versa? Please give me the most secure option.

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16

My pc’s motherboard isn’t UEFI based. It’s BIOS. rEFIned works for UEFI based only. Trying to use it on BIOS doesn’t work well.

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17

i am currently dual booting mint and manjaro, its just been a day everything is fine so far
let’s see what happens in future
hoping for the best :innocent:

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18

Hello
I am currently dual booting Manjaro XFCE with Win 10 on the same HDD with different partitions.
I had to reinstall GRUB twice via live USB.
I can always boot to WIn10 in Manjaro GRUB. But sometimes when I want to test other distros via live USB I cant’ boot into Manjaro.

I want to ditch WIn10 and replace it with Linux Mint XFCE or Peppermint because it’s an old laptop from 2007 with only 3GB RAM and HDD of 80GB so I need something light and fast.

Questions:

  • Can i just replace Win10 partition with a linux distro and keep using manjaro GRUB?
  • The Swap partition created for Manjaro can also be used for Linus Mint for instance?
  • Is there any special thing to pay attention to or can I just do this when installing the linux distro replacing the Wins partition. Both OS are in the same 80GB HDD
19

Well, as long as I remember, Linux Mint also uses the calameres installer, anyways, you can see an option called “Replace with an existing partition”, so that’s what you’re looking for.

No, you can’t. But you can use a “swapfile” instead of a partition, you’ll find more about it online

Just take great care to choosing the right partition

20

Normal windows updates usually don’t cause any issue. But watch out for big Windows Feature updates, twice a year, those could replace grub.

On Fedora I do this
GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG=“true”
Then everything works ok, have tried refind but removed that as it was doing the same thing as grub does but will try again in future.

21

Didn’t know that command, I generaly just use a grub reacue usb if something like that happens. Though, could you explain the command? Is it safe? What does it do?