Question regarding Linux/Ubuntu dual boot systems?

sastusbulbas · 12 Sep 2025 at 00:35

Hi,

I have occasionally ran Ubuntu on it's own, usually it was on old PC's simply to try, but been some years since I spent time on it, recently revisited.

I have set up a new PC, partially, sort of set it up to get started for now. Tried Ubuntu last month, rarely used it due to work and such. But I am thinking it would be worth trying it as a dual boot, second OS for occasional use to cut down on the machines at hand, as it would probably get used more that way.

If going about this, is it best to simply install it along side Windows? Or is installing it on it's own NVMe worth considering? I am thinking mainly to try Steam games initially. Possibly music/flac files.

If your running this alongside another install, what do some of you do for the Linux files such as games on steam, or music libraries, does it have any issues if you have a large archive or Windows files and media, anything it cannot share or access, or keeping it simply with it's own folders? Is there any conflict with Windows 10/11 and Linux when on the same system to watch for?

Thanks

onkston · 12 Sep 2025 at 12:13

I've recently moved over to Linux Mint, dual booting with windows. I have it on separate drives.
From what I gather it's better to have it on its own drive, if you can. I think it just makes things easier, like fixing problems if something messes up. I believe one of the main issues with having them on the same drive is that windows can mess with the boot loader.

Linux can mostly handle data formatted for windows fine. I haven't had to change anything. The only issue I had was with gaming.
I wanted to keep all my games on one drive as I have a couple bought on the Xbox store.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the gaming working on an NTFS drive. I tried all sorts of things but nothing worked and as soon as I switched to ext4 it worked perfectly.

Everything else has been fine, music, films etc. So I just had to partition my games drive with a small section for the windows games.

WantoN · 23 Sep 2025 at 19:54

You can configure dual boot, I'm not familiar with Ubuntu these days but I'd presume either grubby, or if on a different drive you could set boot priority in bios.

I have a 1tb m.2 gaming drive that's MBP and Ntfs, plays fine with my Steam library on Fedora KDE (all other drives are GPT & Btrfs).

I think a lot of it rests on how well your chosen distro handles windows partitions, the only thing I have to do is download some extra files for certain installs, due to case sensitivity.

One thing to consider is Secure Boot. You'll need a distro that is set up for your system now, or consider what you'll have to do with Windows/ BIOS settings to switch between the two.

For most distros having CMS enabled seems to be the default, but mine natively supports Secure Boot, so I transitioned my system over before installing. Technically I'm dual booting now, but I'm not even sure the Windows drive is connected

sastusbulbas · 23 Sep 2025 at 21:48

WantoN said:
You can configure dual boot, I'm not familiar with Ubuntu these days but I'd presume either grubby, or if on a different drive you could set boot priority in bios.

I have a 1tb m.2 gaming drive that's MBP and Ntfs, plays fine with my Steam library on Fedora KDE (all other drives are GPT & Btrfs).

I think a lot of it rests on how well your chosen distro handles windows partitions, the only thing I have to do is download some extra files for certain installs, due to case sensitivity.

One thing to consider is Secure Boot. You'll need a distro that is set up for your system now, or consider what you'll have to do with Windows/ BIOS settings to switch between the two.

For most distros having CMS enabled seems to be the default, but mine natively supports Secure Boot, so I transitioned my system over before installing. Technically I'm dual booting now, but I'm not even sure the Windows drive is connected

I have five NVMe slots, the one I have no plans for is the fifth NVMe which is a Gen 3 slot, I'm thinking a 1tb in there may be the way to go.

Main PC has an OS/programs drive, storage, and a separate games drive that also contains the game clients such as Steam, I may change this all around again, I used to have Steam and GOG etc on C which just the games storage elsewhere, which would certainly be simpler if there is a Linux/Steam application on another drive, I blame brain flatulence when I downloaded Steam.

From what I have seen so far, I simply unplug the Windows NVMe drive, then download Ubuntu onto the NVMe in the Gen 3 slot, There will be no Windows for Linux to see, and Ubuntu will have it's own Grub Bootloader, so when I reconnected the Windows NVMe, the Linux drive having boot priority will show a dual boot option.

Currently I have Windows 10 on the new PC, most of my old files are still on my old 4770k system, and Ubuntu lives in an even older system under the desk, I can get a KVM dock for the two Windows PC's and decommission the old Linux possibly if I like the dual Boot trial. Sounds like a plan!

Secure Boot I will need to look into properly, but it's an AM5 platform, and from what I have seen so far, Secure Boot is independent on separate boot drives.

WantoN · 24 Sep 2025 at 06:59

Sounds like you've got a solid plan in place already, it's essentially what I did, removed the windows os drive, did custom partitioning just to make sure that everything including the boot partition was on the Linux drive. I opted for BTRS, and swapped as many of my drives over to GPT as I could.

My bios got a bit fussy moving drives to different interfaces in secure boot, but otherwise no stress.

Fedora uses Windows UEFI secure boot so that part was seamless. I don't know if you need to load seperate keys or use an 'other os' function for Ubuntu. You might need to change from a drop down when you're booting to the other drive.

Your platform is much more modern than mine (Rog Maximus X Formula, 8700K) so you'll have a much more robust implementation and probably a significantly easier time.

Shared game drives can be tricky as you'd keep NTFS, fedora plays nicely enough but some distros really don't like it, and as it's case sensitive you'll be downloading a few duplicate files for each game.

Little things to consider, but sounds like you're set