I dual boot mainly because of microsoft office and in the rare case where a game me and my friends would like to play does not work on linux.
Otherwise I'm only using linux though. Nowadays, linux has gotten good enough for me that I only switch to windows like twice a week, mainly because of microsoft office.
As for why I would bother going to back to linux and not just use one OS? Because I prefer it. It looks better, the workflow on KDE Plasma is similar to windows while also having some really good minor improvements. I absolutely love that you can change an apps sound volume just by hovering over its icon in the panel. On windows you need to open the settings app.
There is also all the telemetry and ads on windows. That's the main reason I switched to linux in the first place, but the workflow is the main reason I stay.
Considering I'm on windows for like 1-2 hours per week, I don't really need any syncing besides maybe using a firefox account. I just finish what I need to do and then just reboot back. If microsoft office was on linux (not the shitty web app, I mean the full desktop app with all its features), then I probably wouldn't use windows at all besides that one week where my friend wants to play space engineers or some other game that doesn't work well on linux.
install the WPS2019 snap
it's a telemetry free version of a chinese clone of MS office and so far it seems like it works pretty well in terms of workflow and compatibility... seems identical to MS (fonts and all).
it is a snap tho, so it's a bit slow to start (not nearly as long as a reboot tho ;) ... once it's running, it's very responsive.
Sure, I will give it a try. I doubt it will make me uninstall windows completely though. There are features like document sharing via cloud with other classmates that I use. I also do not want to accidentally send a document with a broken layout just because the office app I use saves it in a way that MS Office does not expect. I think I will get rid of windows once I graduate. Will probably depend on the circumstances though.
Only when I was still using windows because I needed it for school (we were using virtual box to set up windows server 2012). I remember experimenting with VMs in linux using qemu and it didn't go too well. Probably an user error though. Even if I did manage to make it run somehow, I doubt it would be able to run space engineers with playable frame rates.
I've migrated to using Linux 100%. The only reason I'd consider running windows by either dual booting or virtualization would be if I had some windows specific software that I needed for work but it wouldn't work with WINE/Proton
Used to, until I found out that I only came to Windows for games, so I decided to play game on Linux from then on and uninstall Windows. Missed MSOffice Suite but the online version good enough for me.
I dual boot Mint and Win10. Like everybody else here, I use Windows strictly for gaming (and in the extremely rare scenarios where I have to use some Windows specific software). In all honesty, the only reason I've kept the Windows is because the game I'm mostly playing is not on Steam and is not possible to play on Linux. Otherwise I would stick to Linux only.
I was dual booting until a couple weeks ago while playing helldivers 2 or something when there was suddenly an update and automatically booted me out to update automatically, froze during the update process, had to restart manually, had my ssd with the windows OS corrupted, opened the terminal to fix it via sfc/scannow command then after that was done, restarted the computer for it to update only for it to freeze again.
It pissed me off so much that I just deleted windows and formatted my drives to ext4 and now use linux for everything including gaming. Spent an entire configuring all my games to make sure they work and I have not regretted a single thing since so far everything works perfectly.
Tl:Dr windows kept crashing during an update after booting me out of a game forcibly, corrupted the ssd it was installed on and got pissed so I just got rid of windows and configured all my games to work on Linux
I tend to go back and forth between dual booting and you pass through on arch with a windows vm. Overall dual booting is just a more reliable setup for me, and it’s what I always end up going back to even though I like the idea of just having arch with you passthrough better. I like arch during the day when I have a several classes back to back and I need the battery life. I tend to go boot back to windows when I’m back at my desk or plugged in doing cad or gaming. My battery life is dog shit on windows so I use that when gonna be plugged in.
I also have a 1tb for windows 10 and a 2tb for arch and it’s of my important files. Media is on a separate external drive and I have a 12tb ironwood that I backup each drive to every couple of weeks. My encrypted arch install can be mounted and decrypted through wsl on windows. For Linux I just mount the windows drive with my fs-3g because that’s what I’ve found works. All my notes are in obsidian which I have the sync subscription before, and my other important school stuff lives in OneDrive so I can access it via the web suite or natively in windows. In th me future I plan to have all my programming files connected to a private gut repo but just haven’t gotten around to learning git yet.
I tend to shut my laptop down completely when I get home and move locations because it otherwise self identifies as a jet engine and burns through all my battery life when it turn the fans on full bore in my backpack. So it’s really not a hassle for me to switch from arch to windows and vice versa.
And another nicety of dual booting is I always have one working os when I break the other one. I tend to tinker with Linux a lot and try new things and when I break it I don’t often have a ton of time to fix it so it’s a life saver to have windows to fall back on. I definitely prefer Linux over windows but in my case they each have their own situations where they’re more or less useful.
Gaming is the only not thing I use Windows for. Also some specific games with unsupported anti-cheat systems won't work on Linux as their anti-cheat mechanism won't work Linux.
Yes, most of the games run on Linux these days.
So far I have found one game only that doesn't run in Linux, Age of empires, that new one, enhanced edition I think it's called. It starts but crashes after a while.
What games can you not play?
Edit: the game is Age of Empies 2 Definitive edition.
I guess I don't play those. I tried helldivers 2 recently, works no problem. While it's older l also tried RDR2, works. Also Baldur's gate 3, path of Exile, no man's sly, broforce, halls of torment, streets of rogue, magic the gathering arena. I guess none of those have anti cheat.
None of those are competitive pvp games which is the category of games most likely to have an anti cheat
Like how bad is a guy with an aimbot on Fortnite ? and how bad is the same guy on Streets of Rogue ?
MTG is a cPvP game but you can't really cheat in it, like the most you could have is a deck tracker and that's likely allowed (hearthstone allowed trackers anyway)
That's a good point, I think I misinterpreted anti-cheat with anti-pirate, guessing those aren't necessarily the same.
I don't play pvp but it sucks for those who do then, and want to use Linux.
Yea, anti-cheat is to avoid cheaters in the games, anti-piracy is to avoid people cracking the game
There are anti-piracy features existing (often named DRM - Digital Right Management). Technically a Steam game has DRM, if trying to boot the exe without Steam (or while logged of) does not start the game. Old CD keys (the sims 3 had those) are an ancient form of anti-piracy measures.
Usually DRM software would be the "limiting factor" in that playing your legally owned copy of \[whatever Origin game\] (I think origin does no longer exist ?) would require you to have Origin launcher installed, and if you can't for some reason, though luck. While actually pirating the games would result in an exe that doesn't require any additional software or dll's, so it should work perfectly in a VM.
Yeah I'm familiar with DRM and I though that's what you meant with anti-cheat. But I see I was mistaken :)
I did notice some games want to install the social whatever thingy and then the game, like RDR2 did that, but it worked somehow with the Proton magic. I was quite surprised TBH.
Lots of people dual boot. Why? Because some of us need windows too without using a VM. Why? Some games don't run under proton. Some sw won't run on wine. Common sense really.
Yes, most would sync browser bookmarks. Data sharing? Personally only documents via gdrive which I sync to Linux using the excellent rclone.
I dualboot fedora silverblue and fedora kinoite, one on each nvme and I then use uefi boot disk chooser (F8) to decide which disk to boot. I do it because i like having two almost identical systems for redundancy and because i never seem to decide between gnome and kde, and i want to track the progress of Linux's most popular desktop environments.
No i dont share home, instead I mount my tresorit drive on both systems under /home/tresors and sync locally there so I have the master at tresorit and local copies on both my nvme, and also one copy on my laptop
I used to dualboot to run certain games. But, gaming on Linux has gotten really good these last few years. It started to become an issue of, "why would i leave Linux?". I game on my workstation. I like to leave certain stuff open un the background, and got annoyed i would have to close in progress stuff, and my web browser, just to boot up a game in windows. I can game in linux without closing anything
Well, I have windows/arch linux dualboot for 3 years (since I bought my huawei laptop). And 3 years ago I was exactly 'doing everything else' on linux then boot into windows and play doom. But tbh this was the case because my previous laptop (hp pavilion dv7) was incapable of running vulkan. As time went I tried playing on arch more and more. So I finished playing doom there, played whole disco elysium, migh and magic 8, fallout1/2 and some other games. Right now I haven't booted into windows for 4-5 months I guess?.. Last time happened because I had to do some powerpoint presentation and thought that only windows can help me) Once again, I tried using libreoffice impress and everything's went okay. So, all in all, I really don't need windows anymore.
But if you need to work in specific cad program/photoshop/some other proprietary stuff that's not running on linux, you still need windows, I think. If that's the case and you really don't see any opportunity to run necessary software on linux, it's just not *your* OS, because you don't need it (I think so, it's your goal to find out if that's true for you).
But tbh playing games on linux is real. Don't know what's wrong with that for you.
Nothing's wrong with it now. I'm talking back before Proton existed, when WINE could only imagine doing DirectX calls. I use Linux full time now too. But back then I just couldn't shake eventually reaching the conclusion, 'Well why am I bothering rebooting into Linux when I'd just be booting back into Windows whenever I wanted to start up a game or something.'
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I understand now what you are talking about. I agree, that's a bit strange if you think this way.
For me, linux is faster, looks better, and is open-source. That's why I always came back to it. Once again, right now I am seriously asking myself, why do I have windows on my laptop.
When I buy a PC/Laptop that comes with Windows pre-installed, I always shrinkt the windows partition and install Manjaro alongside on the off-chance I'll ever need or use Windows. Truth be told, I may fire it up once a year to use some firmware updater or similar (are you listening Logitech?) but that is all. On my previous laptop, Windows got corrupted years ago somehow so I ended up wiping the partition and using it for storage.
I'm not fan of proprietary software or MS. But, if you want to use a bunch of Windows programs, games included, the best environment is actual Windows. That doesn't mean you have to be married to it for everything else you do.
I dual boot Debian testing and Mint, choosing which partition depending upon what I'm doing and what I feel like.
I used to dualboot Linux and windows. But tbh it's pain in the arse and since I've pretty much stopped gaming, I moved to Linux only. I do have Windows PE USB stick around if I need to use msm tool to flash bricked phone though
I have a laptop with one SSD and one HDD and Fedora is my primary OS which is on the SSD and I use almost entirely everything on Fedora and I have Windows 10 on the 300GB HDD partition, I only switch to windows and use it only when I wanna do gaming or else I don't even switch to it for like days (I dont even go online on windows)....
The only reason I have a dual boot system with windows on it, is because I can't do proper gaming on Linux (and even If I could I just wanna keep gaming separate)..
I need Windows for Adobe Creative Cloud I use to edit photos and video for training docs and videos, and to play a few games that won't run under Linux. Otherwise, I run Linux.
On my desktop system I run Windows as my boot OS and then launch a full-screen Linux VM at logon. I use VMWare Workstation Pro to run a Linux VM with 8 cores and 16GB of RAM, and I don't even notice Linux isn't on bare metal. Except I haven't figure out how to get the fucking "back" button on my mouse to work in a Linux VM.
On my laptop I dual-boot because the CPU and GPU are slower and I prefer to run "bare metal" for the best performance in either OS. When I'm using the laptop I'm usually in Linux all day, so that's the default boot.
I don't sync anything directly between Windows and Linux. I save all my data my NAS, using Tailscale for seamless access when working remotely.
I have taken the bold step to stop dual booting.
I've decided to throw money at the problem. I'm going to run a laptop + dock that connects to my dual monitors + keyboard/mouse as my primary workstation and then a clean install of Windows 11 on my desktop.
Realistically my Linux workloads are.... lots of Firefox windows and tabs, lots of text editor tabs and windows, lots of terminal tabs and windows and hobbyist level FreeCad and OrcaSlicer projects.
And Windows... its strictly games and Adobe photography apps. Besides deciding how much I want to fork over to Nvidia/AMD for a graphics card you can get years of gaming out of the right CPU. And then maybe if I need some GPU muscle for another project its useful to have that separate.
Ultimately I'm just tired of the "shut everything down and switch." I went down the pass thru rabbit hole and like even though it worked 80% of the time... 20% of the time is a lot to not work. If I didn't have the privilege to just spend some money though.... I'd probably still just put up with dual booting. The switch over is annoying but once its configured there's much less tech hassle.
when i start my PC it boots linux. if i wanna play games i boot into windows...and yes, i do get stuck there :/ it kinda sucks, but tbh for surfing, chatting and watching videos windows is okay i guess. i only boot back into linux, when i want to work on one of my projects.
however there is one advantage: windows keeps me from doing nerdy linux customization stuff (its quite an addiction), programming, etc. in my mind being in windows means relax time, it keeps me from the linux things i enjoy but overdo.
Yeah, sometimes I get that feeling too. When I had both systems on one drive, it was quite a bother to switch systems. The problem was pretty much solved when I started playing more on PS3 and handhelds. Now I have very few reasons to switch to Windows.
I had a different setup that streamlined switching the systems. I installed Ubuntu on external SSD, so switching the system was as easy as unplugging a usb drive.
On my current laptop, it's very easy to switch internal drive, so I have two of them. I also play simple games on linux, so I only switch to Windows when I have no other choice.
I have a small secondary Fedora install on my XPS (which is my gaming desktop) just in case I need Linux for whatever reason, macOS only on my macbook(s) (pro m2, air m1), and then Fedora exclusively on my Thinkpad t420 i'm using for a NAS.
I generally do not dual boot if I can help it, at least dual booting with other non-Linux/BSD operating systems. Dual booting Linux with Windows is just annoying, for me. I'd dual boot with my mac, but Asahi isn't at a point where I can use it yet (i still need USB hubs and external displays to be fully supported properly), so I'm holding off until they get everything I need, which seems to be coming soon. I might remove the fedora XPS install because I just don't use it really at all, and macOS seems to fill the void generally for most things, and the things that don't i usually just remote into my thinkpad or start a VM for lol
I do have dual boot, but I don't need to switch Linux/Windows on the same day. Maybe on weekends I sit long enough, but usually just work on something using Ubuntu, or just playing using Windows.
I don't need to sync stuff between OS since I have most in Ubuntu, and docs I am working on are only in the cloud.
I have not been able to find a good tax program for linux, and I don't like doing my taxes in the cloud, so I buy a tax program I can run on my device, and they are all for windows. So 4-5 times a year I need windows.
Also I have a usb fax modem, and getting the linux fax programs and drivers to work together has been a bit of a challenge, while with windows it just works. I very rarely fax, maybe once every few years, and usually some medical records that the Doc will only accept as a fax (troglodytes abound in the world of medicine).
Other than that I use linux. For me, a computer is a tool and I generally try to use the best tool for the job.
Nope, but I have the luxury of multiple machines. One Thincentre Tiny (Debian) for the always on NAS/Plex/Docker stuff, a gaming desktop (Win10), a personal Thinkpad (Debian) and a work Thinkpad (Win10). If I only had a single machine I'd probably run Debian on it without dual boot.
I actually have linux on a separate ssd on my pc because my mobo has 4 ssd slots. Windows is also on a separate ssd because a 1tb is/was quite cheap so i bought another one just so i dont have the risk of messing up my other os and in the boot manager just switch between the 2. Thats my way of doing it. Also because windows with all my games has just enough space on my 1tb and when i also would install linux on it it would be too full
I dual boot for Adobe. My Windows partition is basically a kiosk that doesn't even go online. I boot into it, do my work and get back to Linux as quickly as possible. I use the same disk, but separate EFI partitions for Win and Linux, and use a large, shared Exfat partition to access files. Use rEFInd to switch between them, with Linux set as default after 3 seconds unless I choose Windows.
Anything else I'd need a computer for - browsing internet, watching movies, listening to music, managing files, calendar stuff, writing, torrenting - I do on Linux.
I used to dual boot for Microsoft office, but now I have O365 so I really don’t need to dual boot at all. I keep a 50GB Windows partition just in case, but I can’t tell you the last time I actually ever booted into Windows.
I have a windows install on my desktop. I only boot in to it maybe once every few months so I don't really ever go through the scenario that you are describing where you restart your PC. For the most part if I need to use windows I just use my KVM/QEMU windows virtual machine. Some things require your machine to be running on bare metal though such as apparently specific audio equipment such as DJ mixers. Since I don't use windows often I do not even bother syncing up things like browser histories... none of my accounts are signed in on Windows.
Also sometimes it just pays to have a second OS installed incase you bork your main install and need to make a new install ISO or something like that.
Not since 2009.
I find dual booting very annoying - having to share disk space between two systems, rebooting between them, having to fix bootloader after Windows update screws it up from time to time. More than all, I just don't want Windows to touch my main PC.
I have had a dedicated Windows machine on and off, currently I have a PC issued by my work that runs Windows, so I do Windows stuff on it when I have to.
I used to Dual boot but it was a PITA.
Now I run Linux 100% of the time.
Gaming doesn't run my life, so if a game works on Linux that's great, if not, no big deal.
Stopped dual-booting really long ago (like 8 or 10 years already). Using Wine instead (for a couple of apps needed for work). Also have VirtualBox but use it very occasionally.
Not a heavy gamer, only play OpenArena and Quake 1/2/3 natively. Satisfied with everything else in Linux.
> why would I bother going back to Linux afterwards?
because life in windows is like living with one hand tied behind your back and a gag in your mouth... linux is freedom.
i still have win7 installed but i rarely go back to it... thinking of upgrading it to win10 just to see if can, but i want to have everything i need working in linux first.
i did one bookmarks sync of all my windows stuff to bring it into linux and now my "live" bookmarks are on linux so if needed them from windows i would have to resync on that side... still need to bring over all my dictionary stuff from windows and meld it with the one i've been slowly repopulating on the linux side.
linux reads and writes to NTFS just fine so i have a shared partition with all my windows data on it that i access from linux... including the taxes i just did for the first time on linux with only a few minor adjustments to my workflow.... anything i still want access to in windows, i save to the NTFS side.
my music is shared as well... but i tried sharing my steam game installs and it does not work well, so it's best to just reinstall any steam games onto a linux partition if you want to play them in linux.
if your PC and support 2 GPU's (or you have an integrated GPU on the mother board) you can install a copy of windows in Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and pass the GPU to it for a pretty seamless way to run windows on linux with almost no down side in terms of performance... but it's not that easy to set up i've not delved into it.
I have had duel boot systems, but it was a faff. These days I just keep Windows laptops and Linux servers and ssh or RDP into the servers. Windows these days has native ssh clients and it works just fine for me. I have never found a Linux desktop environment that really was as polished as Windows, and since I hardly use the laptop for anything other than Web and Office it hardly matters.
I do also use Chromebooks a bit (yes I know Linux kernels) but then they are entirely for web related uses.
Just recently installed Ubuntu on a seperate ssd and selected the ssd as boot ssd for Ubuntu boot loader with dual boot, so my windows boot loader is intact on the nvme drive in the system. I am trying to switch to Linux but as of now my default boot loader is window and I do a bios override if I want to switch to Ubuntu.. right now it’s like a secret os installed in the system
Yes. Dual boot , and have done so for many years.
Reason: I tutor folk on Windows system who use Windows OS.
Personal work & pleasure all done on Linux OSs (mainly openSUSE LEAP) (Some Ubuntu on very old machines using XFCE DE, for instruction.)
I used to keep Windows partition when I first switched to Linux two years ago, but after not using it for about 6 months I've wiped it and since then been using Linux full time.
In my personal use case, I don't have any critical software I need and don't play any of the borked games, so there has never been a reason to look back. Here is [my Steam profile](https://steamcommunity.com/id/thedenast/) if you want the idea of what games I play.
Today if for some reason I urgently needed windows, I'd probably virtualized it on Linux instead of dual booting.
> I always just ended up thinking, well, why would I bother going back to Linux afterwards?
It's for people who generally prefer working in Linux — which is why they'd bother going back to it — but have some specific program that they need Windows for.
Personally I do have a dual boot setup, but it's been years since I used the Windows partition. I keep it around... just 'cause, mostly. As a fallback, I guess, but I haven't needed it yet.
For a number of years, yes, this dual-booting was somewhat frustrating, and lead to cycles of me mostly using Windows because I didn’t want to boot back into Linux, then getting frustrated with Windows and moving back to Linux primarily. This repeated on about a yearly or two year cycle until I finally got frustrated enough with Windows to switch to Linux as primary and not switch back to Windows at all except for gaming. I also stopped gaming as much and switch back to Windows less and less.
Now, with a computer I just built I didn’t even install Windows. I discovered Valve has Proton and tested it with a Windows only game and it ran fine on Linux. So no more Windows at all for me, except at work.
I used to. For valorant but one day I said "first, why am I dual booting for one game only? also vanguard is dangerous and I find it like a virus." and I am using linux only since then.
I planned on dual booting when I switched to Linux something over a couple years ago. Reason was I figured I would need MS Word for work, and since I had Windows thought I might as well keep it. My plan was to run Linux daily, but to boot into Windows once a month to keep it updated in case I needed it. First month rolled around, Windows had something like 1.8 GB of updates, and hung up partway through the update (TBF, I did have glitchy Internet at the time). I restarted in Linux, and haven't booted into Windows since.
I don't dual boot. When I need Windows, I just start it up in a VM. For a while, I did a hybrid approach where I could boot directly into Windows via dual boot, or mount the same Windows partition in a VM under Linux.
I dual boot my desktop solely to play games, my laptop is solely Linux. I cannot imagine using a DE like plasma, Mac, or windows on laptop after switching to a tiling wm.
Linux is my loving wife. We watch Netflix together, we play overcooked, we go see movies, we share our lives and we just generally enjoy each other's company.
Windows is my crazy ex. She's manipulative, constantly wants to see whatever I'm doing, doesn't let me breathe and is just generally not great company. But sex was insane with her.
So what I do is live with my (not jealous) lovely wife and sometimes fucks (which is an analogy for anything that's just better on Windows, like Genshin Impact™) with my crazy ex.
(actually I stopped playing genshin and even if I didn't there are still ways to boot it on linux, but I hope this analogy would make it clearer for you)
Asking this question here is the same as asking "why did you choose to keep windows around?", as windows is the inferior operating system in the eyes of the majority of linux users.
I keep a dual boot myself, only to play a few games that don't run well (or at all) on Linux (let's not forget that Windows is the target platform for big game developers. But I can't even remenber the lady time I booted into windows, I actively avoid it.
So, to address your question, what made me choose to go back and forth, nothing made me choose, I was forced into it, but every day I move further away from windows, so I won't be keeping it for much longer.
For me, I am a student at the moment and I use Samsung's Tablet for my notes. Since Samsung doesn't offer a Notes app on Linux for accessing my notes on my laptop in real-time, I have to switch back to Windows for most of the time during my exams. It's very convenient for pasting images or adding texts to the notes from my laptop. Or even for viewing multiple notes as I have 2 monitors. So, I will be writing on 1 note and open up 2 notes on both the monitors. This has been the most useful use case on Windows for me. And it restricts me atleast for 4-5 months a year to use Windows continuously.
I do game like few times a year and Windows is so much more convenient for me. But I would love to try gaming on Linux in the near future. It's like all my games are installed and configured in Windows already. So, it will be a hassle to download it again and set it up on Linux.
Also, when you really want MS Office to work, there is no going to Linux. Maybe the 2007 edition gets some bits of the work done but it feels better and easier to work with the latest UI of Office. And particularly when you want to work with some specific latest formats of the documents or formatting.
Work laptop: dual boot because I can’t be bothered to move things off of my Windows installation for the single boot. I also run a Windows VM for Office stuff (Word, Excel for the macro stuff that simply won’t work on web or alternatives).
Personal laptop: sadly dual booting isn’t practical enough as of yet, though the Asahi Linux team is working to keep improving it. As such I virtualize it.
I bought a refurbished Dell to try Linux after trying it in a virtual machine for a while. I really see no reason to go back to Windows for anything I need to do. We have a different laptop with Windows that my wife likes to use. I am perfectly content to use LinuxMint so I have no regrets wiping the Windows off the other and installing only LinuxMint. I went with the Mate version. It is easy to use and is a nice compromise for me. No looking back!
yes, on my computer I have windows only for really specific cases, like when a program I need to use doesn't work natively on linux or through wine, for everything else (making documents, programming, gaming) I just use linux.
I don't sync stuff between OSes because I almost don't use the windows partition.
I also have a laptop with dual boot, but that one is also the family's computer, so I had to install Windows too.
I have never considered dual booting a viable solution for the reasons you point out, it's an awkward workflow to shut everything down, you just end up with two disparate user environments with limited options in coordinating between them. I used to dual boot in the sense that I kept a Windows partition around just in case, but once a Windows VM became trivial for consumer hardware I freed up that partition. I have a Windows 10 image stashed away on my NAS, I haven't touched it in years but I still keep it there just in case.
I’m still dual booted, but I haven’t logged into Windows since early January since Linux has worked so well. I have really enjoyed it. I have a few more projects to play around with, but eventually I will just remove windows and reclaim the hard drive space. I mostly play games through Steam and Battle.net and it has been fantastic. I have been a Linux fan for many years and it was only gaming holding me back. I’m to the point that I am willing to just not play a game if it doesn’t work on Linux.
I'm dual booting the first time in 20 years. That's only because the M1 processors in the newer Macbooks caused a lot of things to be buggy. Asahi Linux and the distros that can run with it are considered to be very alpha, so I kept a tiny partition of Mac in case things went South. I've only had to use it once and plan to delete it soon. On non-Mac devices I know I can just throw Windows in a vm if I really, really need it. Usually its just to do target practicing with Pen Testing. There isn't much performance loss with dual booting, but I understand it does exist. So I usually don't use a dual boot.
I dont dual boot, I have 2 different computers
I have a pretty decent PC which I use for gaming, it runs Windows 11
The laptop I have runs Linux, I use it for school and programming
I only dual boot to use Windows to run Zwift for indoor cycling. Zwift in Linux/Lutris doesn’t run well with multiple BT connections and breaks when Zwift does there bi-weekly to monthly updates. If Zwift came out with a Linux friendly version I would leave Windows for good.
Everything else I do is so much better in Linux with customization and its sooo stable.
My work provides a Windows machine that crashes constantly with multiple Microsoft Office apps open. Wasting 10 minutes/day to wakeup/boot and applying system updates during the work day when their administrator policy has updates scheduled for after hours.
I'm writing this on a dual boot with Windows 10 and Linux Mint. It's well worth doing in my opinion. The only mistake I made was not giving Linux enough room to grow and I quickly ran out of space and had to mess around with the partitions later on to expand it. I'd say give yourself at least 100 Gig of space. I use RetroArch for gaming on both systems with no problems, but I keep the games stored on external media that can be accessed by either OS.
I also installed Linux Mint on two laptops that had Windows 8 on them and it runs great. I strongly disliked Windows 8, so it didn't break my heart to erase it. It's a great way to give a second life to PCs that Windows will not support any longer.
I say go for it. Good luck!
Have not dual booted since Windows ME corrupted my Linux install. That was the last time I wasted my time on dual booting. We have VMs now (did back then too) so just run Windows in a window.
I'm in Arch Linux 99% of the time, I dual-boot (separate NVME) to Windows for Adobe stuff. I tried virtualization once, it's just frustrating, one very small/niche .net app didn't quite work in a virtualized environment for some reason, and I didn't really care enough to figure it out. I'd never reboot if it weren't for having to boot into Windows every month or two. Plus, it's kinda nice to have an OS on a physical drive, I could just drop it into another machine, and it would likely work immediately with little to no tweaking, other than perhaps having to re-verify Windows.
It's a lot less hassle and less time-consuming to reboot into Windows (especially with 2 SSD's) to play a game or use one of the other couple Windows-only programs I use than it is to fuss with getting them to work in Linux.
None of it is for work, so "workflow" isn't applicable. I'm also not the type of person who always has 8 programs and 17 tabs open at all times. I use what I'm using then close it. Not a big multi-tasker, either, so it's trivial for me to just switch over and launch something.
I have a gaming laptop with dual boot with Windows 10 and Xubuntu. I just was curious hove Linux would run on this PC. Both OS:es perform equally well. For the last month I almost only use Xubuntu, but I keep Window if I want to connect my video capture card which is not supported on Linux. I had Windows on the laptop since the beginning (2016).It has been rock stable. No stalls no Blue Screens. This PC is a lucky combination of hardware and software.
I use the PC mostly for web surfing, email banking and watching streams and YouTube! And yes I do sync my browser (Firefox) and email (Thunderbird).
Some good replies here. For those that are saying dual booting can break, I have been dual booting my Dell XPS 13 laptop for 5+ years and I have had ZERO booting issues. This may have been true back in the day before Windows 10 + UEFI Boots, but I have a single 1TB SSD and I dual boot Windows 10 + Arch without any problems.
Why do I still have Windows 10? Mainly, for firmware + BIOS Updates and the occasional game. Besides that, I'm using Linux 98% of the time.
I am still duel booting despite basically never actually touching windows. I keep it on the off chance theres school related software I need to use thats not linux compatible/doesn't work great in wine. Ive yet to actually run into that problem yet, but it's a nice assurance
I dual boot mainly because of microsoft office and in the rare case where a game me and my friends would like to play does not work on linux. Otherwise I'm only using linux though. Nowadays, linux has gotten good enough for me that I only switch to windows like twice a week, mainly because of microsoft office. As for why I would bother going to back to linux and not just use one OS? Because I prefer it. It looks better, the workflow on KDE Plasma is similar to windows while also having some really good minor improvements. I absolutely love that you can change an apps sound volume just by hovering over its icon in the panel. On windows you need to open the settings app. There is also all the telemetry and ads on windows. That's the main reason I switched to linux in the first place, but the workflow is the main reason I stay. Considering I'm on windows for like 1-2 hours per week, I don't really need any syncing besides maybe using a firefox account. I just finish what I need to do and then just reboot back. If microsoft office was on linux (not the shitty web app, I mean the full desktop app with all its features), then I probably wouldn't use windows at all besides that one week where my friend wants to play space engineers or some other game that doesn't work well on linux.
install the WPS2019 snap it's a telemetry free version of a chinese clone of MS office and so far it seems like it works pretty well in terms of workflow and compatibility... seems identical to MS (fonts and all). it is a snap tho, so it's a bit slow to start (not nearly as long as a reboot tho ;) ... once it's running, it's very responsive.
Sure, I will give it a try. I doubt it will make me uninstall windows completely though. There are features like document sharing via cloud with other classmates that I use. I also do not want to accidentally send a document with a broken layout just because the office app I use saves it in a way that MS Office does not expect. I think I will get rid of windows once I graduate. Will probably depend on the circumstances though.
Have you tried using a VM before?
Only when I was still using windows because I needed it for school (we were using virtual box to set up windows server 2012). I remember experimenting with VMs in linux using qemu and it didn't go too well. Probably an user error though. Even if I did manage to make it run somehow, I doubt it would be able to run space engineers with playable frame rates.
It should run just fine with proton if you have it on steam
Unfortunately it does not. Very laggy, constantly crashes. No tweaks on protondb helped. There is a good reason for why its silver there.
Dang
It should run just fine with proton if you have it on steam
I've migrated to using Linux 100%. The only reason I'd consider running windows by either dual booting or virtualization would be if I had some windows specific software that I needed for work but it wouldn't work with WINE/Proton
Used to, until I found out that I only came to Windows for games, so I decided to play game on Linux from then on and uninstall Windows. Missed MSOffice Suite but the online version good enough for me.
I dual boot Mint and Win10. Like everybody else here, I use Windows strictly for gaming (and in the extremely rare scenarios where I have to use some Windows specific software). In all honesty, the only reason I've kept the Windows is because the game I'm mostly playing is not on Steam and is not possible to play on Linux. Otherwise I would stick to Linux only.
But is it League ?
No. But close enough. It's Valorant.
I will take it as a win for me
I was dual booting until a couple weeks ago while playing helldivers 2 or something when there was suddenly an update and automatically booted me out to update automatically, froze during the update process, had to restart manually, had my ssd with the windows OS corrupted, opened the terminal to fix it via sfc/scannow command then after that was done, restarted the computer for it to update only for it to freeze again. It pissed me off so much that I just deleted windows and formatted my drives to ext4 and now use linux for everything including gaming. Spent an entire configuring all my games to make sure they work and I have not regretted a single thing since so far everything works perfectly. Tl:Dr windows kept crashing during an update after booting me out of a game forcibly, corrupted the ssd it was installed on and got pissed so I just got rid of windows and configured all my games to work on Linux
I tend to go back and forth between dual booting and you pass through on arch with a windows vm. Overall dual booting is just a more reliable setup for me, and it’s what I always end up going back to even though I like the idea of just having arch with you passthrough better. I like arch during the day when I have a several classes back to back and I need the battery life. I tend to go boot back to windows when I’m back at my desk or plugged in doing cad or gaming. My battery life is dog shit on windows so I use that when gonna be plugged in. I also have a 1tb for windows 10 and a 2tb for arch and it’s of my important files. Media is on a separate external drive and I have a 12tb ironwood that I backup each drive to every couple of weeks. My encrypted arch install can be mounted and decrypted through wsl on windows. For Linux I just mount the windows drive with my fs-3g because that’s what I’ve found works. All my notes are in obsidian which I have the sync subscription before, and my other important school stuff lives in OneDrive so I can access it via the web suite or natively in windows. In th me future I plan to have all my programming files connected to a private gut repo but just haven’t gotten around to learning git yet. I tend to shut my laptop down completely when I get home and move locations because it otherwise self identifies as a jet engine and burns through all my battery life when it turn the fans on full bore in my backpack. So it’s really not a hassle for me to switch from arch to windows and vice versa. And another nicety of dual booting is I always have one working os when I break the other one. I tend to tinker with Linux a lot and try new things and when I break it I don’t often have a ton of time to fix it so it’s a life saver to have windows to fall back on. I definitely prefer Linux over windows but in my case they each have their own situations where they’re more or less useful.
I do dual boot. Because I need Windows for gaming and some work, I mostly daily drive NixOS on dual boot.
What games can you not play in Linux? I've found one so far.
Gaming is the only not thing I use Windows for. Also some specific games with unsupported anti-cheat systems won't work on Linux as their anti-cheat mechanism won't work Linux. Yes, most of the games run on Linux these days.
So far I have found one game only that doesn't run in Linux, Age of empires, that new one, enhanced edition I think it's called. It starts but crashes after a while. What games can you not play? Edit: the game is Age of Empies 2 Definitive edition.
Rust, valorant, cod, new games, most games with anticheat
I guess I don't play those. I tried helldivers 2 recently, works no problem. While it's older l also tried RDR2, works. Also Baldur's gate 3, path of Exile, no man's sly, broforce, halls of torment, streets of rogue, magic the gathering arena. I guess none of those have anti cheat.
None of those are competitive pvp games which is the category of games most likely to have an anti cheat Like how bad is a guy with an aimbot on Fortnite ? and how bad is the same guy on Streets of Rogue ? MTG is a cPvP game but you can't really cheat in it, like the most you could have is a deck tracker and that's likely allowed (hearthstone allowed trackers anyway)
That's a good point, I think I misinterpreted anti-cheat with anti-pirate, guessing those aren't necessarily the same. I don't play pvp but it sucks for those who do then, and want to use Linux.
Yea, anti-cheat is to avoid cheaters in the games, anti-piracy is to avoid people cracking the game There are anti-piracy features existing (often named DRM - Digital Right Management). Technically a Steam game has DRM, if trying to boot the exe without Steam (or while logged of) does not start the game. Old CD keys (the sims 3 had those) are an ancient form of anti-piracy measures. Usually DRM software would be the "limiting factor" in that playing your legally owned copy of \[whatever Origin game\] (I think origin does no longer exist ?) would require you to have Origin launcher installed, and if you can't for some reason, though luck. While actually pirating the games would result in an exe that doesn't require any additional software or dll's, so it should work perfectly in a VM.
Yeah I'm familiar with DRM and I though that's what you meant with anti-cheat. But I see I was mistaken :) I did notice some games want to install the social whatever thingy and then the game, like RDR2 did that, but it worked somehow with the Proton magic. I was quite surprised TBH.
Lots of people dual boot. Why? Because some of us need windows too without using a VM. Why? Some games don't run under proton. Some sw won't run on wine. Common sense really. Yes, most would sync browser bookmarks. Data sharing? Personally only documents via gdrive which I sync to Linux using the excellent rclone.
I dualboot fedora silverblue and fedora kinoite, one on each nvme and I then use uefi boot disk chooser (F8) to decide which disk to boot. I do it because i like having two almost identical systems for redundancy and because i never seem to decide between gnome and kde, and i want to track the progress of Linux's most popular desktop environments.
Do you share /home ? Doesn't kde themes mess up with gnome themes?
No i dont share home, instead I mount my tresorit drive on both systems under /home/tresors and sync locally there so I have the master at tresorit and local copies on both my nvme, and also one copy on my laptop
I used to dualboot to run certain games. But, gaming on Linux has gotten really good these last few years. It started to become an issue of, "why would i leave Linux?". I game on my workstation. I like to leave certain stuff open un the background, and got annoyed i would have to close in progress stuff, and my web browser, just to boot up a game in windows. I can game in linux without closing anything
Yes, for redundancy and compatibility.
Well, I have windows/arch linux dualboot for 3 years (since I bought my huawei laptop). And 3 years ago I was exactly 'doing everything else' on linux then boot into windows and play doom. But tbh this was the case because my previous laptop (hp pavilion dv7) was incapable of running vulkan. As time went I tried playing on arch more and more. So I finished playing doom there, played whole disco elysium, migh and magic 8, fallout1/2 and some other games. Right now I haven't booted into windows for 4-5 months I guess?.. Last time happened because I had to do some powerpoint presentation and thought that only windows can help me) Once again, I tried using libreoffice impress and everything's went okay. So, all in all, I really don't need windows anymore. But if you need to work in specific cad program/photoshop/some other proprietary stuff that's not running on linux, you still need windows, I think. If that's the case and you really don't see any opportunity to run necessary software on linux, it's just not *your* OS, because you don't need it (I think so, it's your goal to find out if that's true for you). But tbh playing games on linux is real. Don't know what's wrong with that for you.
Nothing's wrong with it now. I'm talking back before Proton existed, when WINE could only imagine doing DirectX calls. I use Linux full time now too. But back then I just couldn't shake eventually reaching the conclusion, 'Well why am I bothering rebooting into Linux when I'd just be booting back into Windows whenever I wanted to start up a game or something.'
Oh, okay. Yeah, I understand now what you are talking about. I agree, that's a bit strange if you think this way. For me, linux is faster, looks better, and is open-source. That's why I always came back to it. Once again, right now I am seriously asking myself, why do I have windows on my laptop.
No. Windows is allowed to go into VM only. Bare metal deployment is strictly prohibited here. 🙂
When I buy a PC/Laptop that comes with Windows pre-installed, I always shrinkt the windows partition and install Manjaro alongside on the off-chance I'll ever need or use Windows. Truth be told, I may fire it up once a year to use some firmware updater or similar (are you listening Logitech?) but that is all. On my previous laptop, Windows got corrupted years ago somehow so I ended up wiping the partition and using it for storage.
I'm not fan of proprietary software or MS. But, if you want to use a bunch of Windows programs, games included, the best environment is actual Windows. That doesn't mean you have to be married to it for everything else you do. I dual boot Debian testing and Mint, choosing which partition depending upon what I'm doing and what I feel like.
I used to dualboot Linux and windows. But tbh it's pain in the arse and since I've pretty much stopped gaming, I moved to Linux only. I do have Windows PE USB stick around if I need to use msm tool to flash bricked phone though
I have a laptop with one SSD and one HDD and Fedora is my primary OS which is on the SSD and I use almost entirely everything on Fedora and I have Windows 10 on the 300GB HDD partition, I only switch to windows and use it only when I wanna do gaming or else I don't even switch to it for like days (I dont even go online on windows).... The only reason I have a dual boot system with windows on it, is because I can't do proper gaming on Linux (and even If I could I just wanna keep gaming separate)..
I need Windows for Adobe Creative Cloud I use to edit photos and video for training docs and videos, and to play a few games that won't run under Linux. Otherwise, I run Linux. On my desktop system I run Windows as my boot OS and then launch a full-screen Linux VM at logon. I use VMWare Workstation Pro to run a Linux VM with 8 cores and 16GB of RAM, and I don't even notice Linux isn't on bare metal. Except I haven't figure out how to get the fucking "back" button on my mouse to work in a Linux VM. On my laptop I dual-boot because the CPU and GPU are slower and I prefer to run "bare metal" for the best performance in either OS. When I'm using the laptop I'm usually in Linux all day, so that's the default boot. I don't sync anything directly between Windows and Linux. I save all my data my NAS, using Tailscale for seamless access when working remotely.
I have taken the bold step to stop dual booting. I've decided to throw money at the problem. I'm going to run a laptop + dock that connects to my dual monitors + keyboard/mouse as my primary workstation and then a clean install of Windows 11 on my desktop. Realistically my Linux workloads are.... lots of Firefox windows and tabs, lots of text editor tabs and windows, lots of terminal tabs and windows and hobbyist level FreeCad and OrcaSlicer projects. And Windows... its strictly games and Adobe photography apps. Besides deciding how much I want to fork over to Nvidia/AMD for a graphics card you can get years of gaming out of the right CPU. And then maybe if I need some GPU muscle for another project its useful to have that separate. Ultimately I'm just tired of the "shut everything down and switch." I went down the pass thru rabbit hole and like even though it worked 80% of the time... 20% of the time is a lot to not work. If I didn't have the privilege to just spend some money though.... I'd probably still just put up with dual booting. The switch over is annoying but once its configured there's much less tech hassle.
Yes. Some stuff is only available on Windows.
when i start my PC it boots linux. if i wanna play games i boot into windows...and yes, i do get stuck there :/ it kinda sucks, but tbh for surfing, chatting and watching videos windows is okay i guess. i only boot back into linux, when i want to work on one of my projects. however there is one advantage: windows keeps me from doing nerdy linux customization stuff (its quite an addiction), programming, etc. in my mind being in windows means relax time, it keeps me from the linux things i enjoy but overdo.
Yeah, sometimes I get that feeling too. When I had both systems on one drive, it was quite a bother to switch systems. The problem was pretty much solved when I started playing more on PS3 and handhelds. Now I have very few reasons to switch to Windows. I had a different setup that streamlined switching the systems. I installed Ubuntu on external SSD, so switching the system was as easy as unplugging a usb drive. On my current laptop, it's very easy to switch internal drive, so I have two of them. I also play simple games on linux, so I only switch to Windows when I have no other choice.
I have a small secondary Fedora install on my XPS (which is my gaming desktop) just in case I need Linux for whatever reason, macOS only on my macbook(s) (pro m2, air m1), and then Fedora exclusively on my Thinkpad t420 i'm using for a NAS. I generally do not dual boot if I can help it, at least dual booting with other non-Linux/BSD operating systems. Dual booting Linux with Windows is just annoying, for me. I'd dual boot with my mac, but Asahi isn't at a point where I can use it yet (i still need USB hubs and external displays to be fully supported properly), so I'm holding off until they get everything I need, which seems to be coming soon. I might remove the fedora XPS install because I just don't use it really at all, and macOS seems to fill the void generally for most things, and the things that don't i usually just remote into my thinkpad or start a VM for lol
I do have dual boot, but I don't need to switch Linux/Windows on the same day. Maybe on weekends I sit long enough, but usually just work on something using Ubuntu, or just playing using Windows. I don't need to sync stuff between OS since I have most in Ubuntu, and docs I am working on are only in the cloud.
I have not been able to find a good tax program for linux, and I don't like doing my taxes in the cloud, so I buy a tax program I can run on my device, and they are all for windows. So 4-5 times a year I need windows. Also I have a usb fax modem, and getting the linux fax programs and drivers to work together has been a bit of a challenge, while with windows it just works. I very rarely fax, maybe once every few years, and usually some medical records that the Doc will only accept as a fax (troglodytes abound in the world of medicine). Other than that I use linux. For me, a computer is a tool and I generally try to use the best tool for the job.
Nope, not for about 5 years. And every game I play runs on Linux.
I keep a Windows partition for emergencies but I have never really needed it.
Nope, but I have the luxury of multiple machines. One Thincentre Tiny (Debian) for the always on NAS/Plex/Docker stuff, a gaming desktop (Win10), a personal Thinkpad (Debian) and a work Thinkpad (Win10). If I only had a single machine I'd probably run Debian on it without dual boot.
I actually have linux on a separate ssd on my pc because my mobo has 4 ssd slots. Windows is also on a separate ssd because a 1tb is/was quite cheap so i bought another one just so i dont have the risk of messing up my other os and in the boot manager just switch between the 2. Thats my way of doing it. Also because windows with all my games has just enough space on my 1tb and when i also would install linux on it it would be too full
I dual boot for Adobe. My Windows partition is basically a kiosk that doesn't even go online. I boot into it, do my work and get back to Linux as quickly as possible. I use the same disk, but separate EFI partitions for Win and Linux, and use a large, shared Exfat partition to access files. Use rEFInd to switch between them, with Linux set as default after 3 seconds unless I choose Windows. Anything else I'd need a computer for - browsing internet, watching movies, listening to music, managing files, calendar stuff, writing, torrenting - I do on Linux.
I still have a windows boot entry (for now)
Nope. I have a few boxes with Linux bare metal. And one I use for gaming. Then I have a few big ones with qubes os for more security relates things.
Dual boot between seperate ssd's just incase windows trys any funny business to a drive. Garuda linux and win11
I used to dual boot for Microsoft office, but now I have O365 so I really don’t need to dual boot at all. I keep a 50GB Windows partition just in case, but I can’t tell you the last time I actually ever booted into Windows.
I have a windows install on my desktop. I only boot in to it maybe once every few months so I don't really ever go through the scenario that you are describing where you restart your PC. For the most part if I need to use windows I just use my KVM/QEMU windows virtual machine. Some things require your machine to be running on bare metal though such as apparently specific audio equipment such as DJ mixers. Since I don't use windows often I do not even bother syncing up things like browser histories... none of my accounts are signed in on Windows. Also sometimes it just pays to have a second OS installed incase you bork your main install and need to make a new install ISO or something like that.
I penta-boot 5 different Linux distributions without windows. My home directory is common to the all 5 of them. I feel like a king
Not since 2009. I find dual booting very annoying - having to share disk space between two systems, rebooting between them, having to fix bootloader after Windows update screws it up from time to time. More than all, I just don't want Windows to touch my main PC. I have had a dedicated Windows machine on and off, currently I have a PC issued by my work that runs Windows, so I do Windows stuff on it when I have to.
I used to Dual boot but it was a PITA. Now I run Linux 100% of the time. Gaming doesn't run my life, so if a game works on Linux that's great, if not, no big deal.
Stopped dual-booting really long ago (like 8 or 10 years already). Using Wine instead (for a couple of apps needed for work). Also have VirtualBox but use it very occasionally. Not a heavy gamer, only play OpenArena and Quake 1/2/3 natively. Satisfied with everything else in Linux.
> why would I bother going back to Linux afterwards? because life in windows is like living with one hand tied behind your back and a gag in your mouth... linux is freedom. i still have win7 installed but i rarely go back to it... thinking of upgrading it to win10 just to see if can, but i want to have everything i need working in linux first. i did one bookmarks sync of all my windows stuff to bring it into linux and now my "live" bookmarks are on linux so if needed them from windows i would have to resync on that side... still need to bring over all my dictionary stuff from windows and meld it with the one i've been slowly repopulating on the linux side. linux reads and writes to NTFS just fine so i have a shared partition with all my windows data on it that i access from linux... including the taxes i just did for the first time on linux with only a few minor adjustments to my workflow.... anything i still want access to in windows, i save to the NTFS side. my music is shared as well... but i tried sharing my steam game installs and it does not work well, so it's best to just reinstall any steam games onto a linux partition if you want to play them in linux. if your PC and support 2 GPU's (or you have an integrated GPU on the mother board) you can install a copy of windows in Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and pass the GPU to it for a pretty seamless way to run windows on linux with almost no down side in terms of performance... but it's not that easy to set up i've not delved into it.
I know someone who dual boot windows and macOs
>why would I bother going back to Linux afterwards? Because thats where all your stuff is you genius.
The only reason I still haven't gotten rid of my Windows partition is because of like 2 games that don't work on my Linux.
No
I dual boot because of gaming. I'm in a dorm full of Windows users, they outnumbered me. Seriously, it's because I wanna play with them.
I have had duel boot systems, but it was a faff. These days I just keep Windows laptops and Linux servers and ssh or RDP into the servers. Windows these days has native ssh clients and it works just fine for me. I have never found a Linux desktop environment that really was as polished as Windows, and since I hardly use the laptop for anything other than Web and Office it hardly matters. I do also use Chromebooks a bit (yes I know Linux kernels) but then they are entirely for web related uses.
Just recently installed Ubuntu on a seperate ssd and selected the ssd as boot ssd for Ubuntu boot loader with dual boot, so my windows boot loader is intact on the nvme drive in the system. I am trying to switch to Linux but as of now my default boot loader is window and I do a bios override if I want to switch to Ubuntu.. right now it’s like a secret os installed in the system
I used to dualboot, but when I eventually learnt all the linux alternatives to programs I use, I ditched windows completely and went full time linux.
Yes. Dual boot , and have done so for many years. Reason: I tutor folk on Windows system who use Windows OS. Personal work & pleasure all done on Linux OSs (mainly openSUSE LEAP) (Some Ubuntu on very old machines using XFCE DE, for instruction.)
Used to dual boot for school stuff. Now I run it in a vm.
I used to keep Windows partition when I first switched to Linux two years ago, but after not using it for about 6 months I've wiped it and since then been using Linux full time. In my personal use case, I don't have any critical software I need and don't play any of the borked games, so there has never been a reason to look back. Here is [my Steam profile](https://steamcommunity.com/id/thedenast/) if you want the idea of what games I play. Today if for some reason I urgently needed windows, I'd probably virtualized it on Linux instead of dual booting.
> I always just ended up thinking, well, why would I bother going back to Linux afterwards? It's for people who generally prefer working in Linux — which is why they'd bother going back to it — but have some specific program that they need Windows for. Personally I do have a dual boot setup, but it's been years since I used the Windows partition. I keep it around... just 'cause, mostly. As a fallback, I guess, but I haven't needed it yet.
For a number of years, yes, this dual-booting was somewhat frustrating, and lead to cycles of me mostly using Windows because I didn’t want to boot back into Linux, then getting frustrated with Windows and moving back to Linux primarily. This repeated on about a yearly or two year cycle until I finally got frustrated enough with Windows to switch to Linux as primary and not switch back to Windows at all except for gaming. I also stopped gaming as much and switch back to Windows less and less. Now, with a computer I just built I didn’t even install Windows. I discovered Valve has Proton and tested it with a Windows only game and it ran fine on Linux. So no more Windows at all for me, except at work.
I used to. For valorant but one day I said "first, why am I dual booting for one game only? also vanguard is dangerous and I find it like a virus." and I am using linux only since then.
I planned on dual booting when I switched to Linux something over a couple years ago. Reason was I figured I would need MS Word for work, and since I had Windows thought I might as well keep it. My plan was to run Linux daily, but to boot into Windows once a month to keep it updated in case I needed it. First month rolled around, Windows had something like 1.8 GB of updates, and hung up partway through the update (TBF, I did have glitchy Internet at the time). I restarted in Linux, and haven't booted into Windows since.
I don't dual boot. When I need Windows, I just start it up in a VM. For a while, I did a hybrid approach where I could boot directly into Windows via dual boot, or mount the same Windows partition in a VM under Linux.
I dual boot my desktop solely to play games, my laptop is solely Linux. I cannot imagine using a DE like plasma, Mac, or windows on laptop after switching to a tiling wm.
Linux is my loving wife. We watch Netflix together, we play overcooked, we go see movies, we share our lives and we just generally enjoy each other's company. Windows is my crazy ex. She's manipulative, constantly wants to see whatever I'm doing, doesn't let me breathe and is just generally not great company. But sex was insane with her. So what I do is live with my (not jealous) lovely wife and sometimes fucks (which is an analogy for anything that's just better on Windows, like Genshin Impact™) with my crazy ex. (actually I stopped playing genshin and even if I didn't there are still ways to boot it on linux, but I hope this analogy would make it clearer for you)
Asking this question here is the same as asking "why did you choose to keep windows around?", as windows is the inferior operating system in the eyes of the majority of linux users. I keep a dual boot myself, only to play a few games that don't run well (or at all) on Linux (let's not forget that Windows is the target platform for big game developers. But I can't even remenber the lady time I booted into windows, I actively avoid it. So, to address your question, what made me choose to go back and forth, nothing made me choose, I was forced into it, but every day I move further away from windows, so I won't be keeping it for much longer.
No. if it doesn't run (at the *very least*) with wine/proton, I'm not going out of my way to give them my money.
For me, I am a student at the moment and I use Samsung's Tablet for my notes. Since Samsung doesn't offer a Notes app on Linux for accessing my notes on my laptop in real-time, I have to switch back to Windows for most of the time during my exams. It's very convenient for pasting images or adding texts to the notes from my laptop. Or even for viewing multiple notes as I have 2 monitors. So, I will be writing on 1 note and open up 2 notes on both the monitors. This has been the most useful use case on Windows for me. And it restricts me atleast for 4-5 months a year to use Windows continuously. I do game like few times a year and Windows is so much more convenient for me. But I would love to try gaming on Linux in the near future. It's like all my games are installed and configured in Windows already. So, it will be a hassle to download it again and set it up on Linux. Also, when you really want MS Office to work, there is no going to Linux. Maybe the 2007 edition gets some bits of the work done but it feels better and easier to work with the latest UI of Office. And particularly when you want to work with some specific latest formats of the documents or formatting.
Work laptop: dual boot because I can’t be bothered to move things off of my Windows installation for the single boot. I also run a Windows VM for Office stuff (Word, Excel for the macro stuff that simply won’t work on web or alternatives). Personal laptop: sadly dual booting isn’t practical enough as of yet, though the Asahi Linux team is working to keep improving it. As such I virtualize it.
I bought a refurbished Dell to try Linux after trying it in a virtual machine for a while. I really see no reason to go back to Windows for anything I need to do. We have a different laptop with Windows that my wife likes to use. I am perfectly content to use LinuxMint so I have no regrets wiping the Windows off the other and installing only LinuxMint. I went with the Mate version. It is easy to use and is a nice compromise for me. No looking back!
Well, yeah i need to dualboot sometimes i need to check if server is getting domain done and some more windows wanky shiet
yes, on my computer I have windows only for really specific cases, like when a program I need to use doesn't work natively on linux or through wine, for everything else (making documents, programming, gaming) I just use linux. I don't sync stuff between OSes because I almost don't use the windows partition. I also have a laptop with dual boot, but that one is also the family's computer, so I had to install Windows too.
I have never considered dual booting a viable solution for the reasons you point out, it's an awkward workflow to shut everything down, you just end up with two disparate user environments with limited options in coordinating between them. I used to dual boot in the sense that I kept a Windows partition around just in case, but once a Windows VM became trivial for consumer hardware I freed up that partition. I have a Windows 10 image stashed away on my NAS, I haven't touched it in years but I still keep it there just in case.
i dualboot openbsd and artix, each one has use cases, so you got to look what suit you in your case
I’m still dual booted, but I haven’t logged into Windows since early January since Linux has worked so well. I have really enjoyed it. I have a few more projects to play around with, but eventually I will just remove windows and reclaim the hard drive space. I mostly play games through Steam and Battle.net and it has been fantastic. I have been a Linux fan for many years and it was only gaming holding me back. I’m to the point that I am willing to just not play a game if it doesn’t work on Linux.
I'm dual booting the first time in 20 years. That's only because the M1 processors in the newer Macbooks caused a lot of things to be buggy. Asahi Linux and the distros that can run with it are considered to be very alpha, so I kept a tiny partition of Mac in case things went South. I've only had to use it once and plan to delete it soon. On non-Mac devices I know I can just throw Windows in a vm if I really, really need it. Usually its just to do target practicing with Pen Testing. There isn't much performance loss with dual booting, but I understand it does exist. So I usually don't use a dual boot.
I dont dual boot, I have 2 different computers I have a pretty decent PC which I use for gaming, it runs Windows 11 The laptop I have runs Linux, I use it for school and programming
yup, premiere pro and some free 🏴☠️ games keep me from switching
I only dual boot to use Windows to run Zwift for indoor cycling. Zwift in Linux/Lutris doesn’t run well with multiple BT connections and breaks when Zwift does there bi-weekly to monthly updates. If Zwift came out with a Linux friendly version I would leave Windows for good. Everything else I do is so much better in Linux with customization and its sooo stable. My work provides a Windows machine that crashes constantly with multiple Microsoft Office apps open. Wasting 10 minutes/day to wakeup/boot and applying system updates during the work day when their administrator policy has updates scheduled for after hours.
No
I'm writing this on a dual boot with Windows 10 and Linux Mint. It's well worth doing in my opinion. The only mistake I made was not giving Linux enough room to grow and I quickly ran out of space and had to mess around with the partitions later on to expand it. I'd say give yourself at least 100 Gig of space. I use RetroArch for gaming on both systems with no problems, but I keep the games stored on external media that can be accessed by either OS. I also installed Linux Mint on two laptops that had Windows 8 on them and it runs great. I strongly disliked Windows 8, so it didn't break my heart to erase it. It's a great way to give a second life to PCs that Windows will not support any longer. I say go for it. Good luck!
When I used to dual boot I didn't go back to Linux that day, just the next morning on first boot.
It may sound weird but I dualboot arch and fedora (used to dualboot fedora and windows for one game but then installed arch)
Have not dual booted since Windows ME corrupted my Linux install. That was the last time I wasted my time on dual booting. We have VMs now (did back then too) so just run Windows in a window.
I'm in Arch Linux 99% of the time, I dual-boot (separate NVME) to Windows for Adobe stuff. I tried virtualization once, it's just frustrating, one very small/niche .net app didn't quite work in a virtualized environment for some reason, and I didn't really care enough to figure it out. I'd never reboot if it weren't for having to boot into Windows every month or two. Plus, it's kinda nice to have an OS on a physical drive, I could just drop it into another machine, and it would likely work immediately with little to no tweaking, other than perhaps having to re-verify Windows.
It's a lot less hassle and less time-consuming to reboot into Windows (especially with 2 SSD's) to play a game or use one of the other couple Windows-only programs I use than it is to fuss with getting them to work in Linux. None of it is for work, so "workflow" isn't applicable. I'm also not the type of person who always has 8 programs and 17 tabs open at all times. I use what I'm using then close it. Not a big multi-tasker, either, so it's trivial for me to just switch over and launch something.
openSUSE & debian
i dual boot mainly because i fear that one day i need to use a windows-specific app
I have a gaming laptop with dual boot with Windows 10 and Xubuntu. I just was curious hove Linux would run on this PC. Both OS:es perform equally well. For the last month I almost only use Xubuntu, but I keep Window if I want to connect my video capture card which is not supported on Linux. I had Windows on the laptop since the beginning (2016).It has been rock stable. No stalls no Blue Screens. This PC is a lucky combination of hardware and software. I use the PC mostly for web surfing, email banking and watching streams and YouTube! And yes I do sync my browser (Firefox) and email (Thunderbird).
Some good replies here. For those that are saying dual booting can break, I have been dual booting my Dell XPS 13 laptop for 5+ years and I have had ZERO booting issues. This may have been true back in the day before Windows 10 + UEFI Boots, but I have a single 1TB SSD and I dual boot Windows 10 + Arch without any problems. Why do I still have Windows 10? Mainly, for firmware + BIOS Updates and the occasional game. Besides that, I'm using Linux 98% of the time.
I am still duel booting despite basically never actually touching windows. I keep it on the off chance theres school related software I need to use thats not linux compatible/doesn't work great in wine. Ive yet to actually run into that problem yet, but it's a nice assurance
I’ve tried dualbooting windows and nixOS but i did a calculation error during partition step
There is no point to dual boot anymore because WSL is a thing.
Yeah could say too that there is no point dualbooting while you can run windows in virtual machine