Is it possible to turn a dual boot into a single boot?

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Hello,

I have been trying out Linux for the first time using Manjaro in a dual boot configuration, and I am very happy with it.

I have been running a GPT partition table SSD drive, with the first half of the drive being the Win10 install and the second half being the Manjaro install. Now, I am thinking of making the whole drive Manjaro, and running the last 2 bits of software I need in the Oraacle VirtualBox.

Is there a workflow through which I can delete the windows partitions, and extend the btrfs partition across the whole drive, with it remaining the root bootable partition?

Thank you for helping out a total noob.

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yes, but as noob everything can happen. learning by mistakes is common to all of us. the first and most important thing you must do is to backup and store all your important datas. keep them on an external storage that you disconnect afterwards.
a second tip is to create a bootable stick with a small distro with gparted or similar distros that are designed to boot from and make all relevant changes on the disc. a tip: look for creating a ventoy-stick. you can install the ventoy-app from the repos with

sudo pacman -S ventoy

and create a bootable stick. this stick is useful cause you can copy different images on it and choose what iso you wanna boot.

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  1. Do a backup of your data, just in case you do a mistake.
  2. identify the partitions that belong to Windows on Gparted.
  3. delete them with Gparted.
  4. expand the root partition. Since it is BTRFS, you can extend the partition to the right even without a live session on the booted installation. (but you cannot move it)
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This is interesting. Could the btrfs partition be copied to the beginning of the drive, the original deleted and then the copy expanded across the drive. Would it be possible to make the new partition bootable?

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As I said:

… when mounted, so only on a live session booted with USB-Stick

Actually not needed. On UEFI, don’t delete the efi partition. On BIOS, the MBR is already written.

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So to confirm:

From a live session off a USB stick:

  1. Don’t touch EFI partition
  2. Kill MS reserved partition
  3. Kill MS install partition
  4. Kill final NTFS partition
  5. Copy root to right after the EFI
  6. Delete original
  7. Expand copy to the end of the drive
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Sounds reasonable, except this is not clear:

You don’t delete the original. You move it to beginning. But yeah, actually you copy and shift the table.

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I am not sure if it works with btrfs, but usually there are options in partition mangers that are called resize, which allow to move boundaries of partitions

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@Erim

While this is true, that one can extend (resize) partitions quite easily with available tools, the problem remains where the partition to be resized happens to be / – moving the boundary to the left can cause grief; inability to boot; the possibility of data loss.

However, moving a boundary to the right is relatively safe, in comparison. This is why the general emphasis (above) has referred to extending a partition to the right.

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All-in-all, megavolt’s solution worked and left me with a bootable install. Everything was running fine, and then I started monkeying around with booting options and my bios.

Anyway, it worked fine until I messed with it and I didn’t lose any data because I made a backup. Now, I’m on a different fresh all Linux drive. In the end, even though megavolt’s solution was fine, I wanted to do other stuff and getting the install to move every time was just not worth the agitation.

Thank you, everybody, for helping. Your time and effort is appreciated.

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