I'm planning on adding a dual-booting section to my guide on how to install Linux and I need some input from people who are dual booting Windows and Linux:

  • How did you allocate the partition for Linux? Did you use Disk Management from Windows or did you allocate the partition as part of the installation process?

  • How do you share data between the two partitions? Do you create a third partition that both OS partitions have access to? Do you use external drives/flash drives? Or do you just have no need to share data between the two drives?

  • zongor [comrade/them, he/him]
    ·
    5 months ago

    Do disk management from windows/mac side first always. Windows does some weird stuff with their memory management (like unmovable files). So it’s easy to accidentally break stuff if you were to partition from Linux. I think Mac is slightly safer but they also have some weird stuff that’s a lot easier to use their partition tools to shrink and partition. Then during install you can rewrite the partitions file system to be more Linux friendly (e.g. ext4, btrfs, etc)

    As far as file sharing I have a separate disk that is FAT32 formatted but that’s just because I was hyper paranoid, NTFS works fine and has been in the Linux kernel for some time now. Mostly I did this so I could share the same steam library between my Linux and windows partitions so I didn’t have to install everything twice. External drives also work very well but I think it’s better for a back up rather than day to day. Also you can mount your windows partition directly in Linux so there’s really no need to have a 3rd partition for sharing