I love Linux and despise Windows. But I’m forced to keep Windows around for occasional anti-cheat games or obscure pieces of software I need to run with no Linux alternative.
I’ve been duel booting Fedora Linux & Windows for the last three years. It gets the job done but it’s annoying.
Even though Fedora and Windows are on completely separate drives, if I reinstall Fedora, it overwrites my windows boot loader. I like to start fresh whenever a new major Fedora update is available, so this gets very tiresome.
I’m in Fedora 99.5% of the time anyways, I really just want to be able to access Windows quickly without effecting my main system, like in a separate Windows instance or something.
I already tried virtualization and GPU pass-through but there always seems to be issues that pop up.
What do you guys suggest? Should I just run a whole separate system and use KVM? What’s the best way to deal with this issue?
If you’d like to try again, post your plans here and we can help. This has been pretty easy for me these days with QEMU and Virtual Machine Manager to add devices through current desktop environments. No more CLI tweaks needed.
I always do a Windows VM and use a GPU for acceleration. That acceleration part is key to playing games and having a snappy response. So depending on your hardware and multiple GPUs setup, will depending on how to wire it up.
Or, yeah, ive been known to have a dedicated 2nd and 3rd PCs for work or work times with a KVM.
Personally, I skip KVMs and just use a USB switcher for mouse, KB, camera, microphone, etc. and use the monitor’s multiple inputs as I like to flip between devices.
What I’ve done in the past is clean-install Windows first. Make sure the EFI partition is on the Windows disk.
This will mean that when you later install Linux to another disk, Linux will re-use the EFI partition on the Microsoft disk and they will live peacefully side by side. You can nuke your Linux disk any time and re-install, and it should not wipe out your Windows boot manager then.
I don’t think you can do GPU pass-through for anti-cheat games, unless the anti-cheat is noob-tier.
Unless you explicitly formatted the efi system partition that is not a thing any more. Probably it only changed the bios’ boot order. On uefi systems there’s no boot sector any more but instead an efi system partition that allows boot loader executables to peacefully coexist. Read up on it and it will become clear.
Dual booting is possible to set up just fine and the order of install doesn’t really matter, especially if you have separate drives. Pass through can work too but you need a well behaved GPU and won’t help with anti cheat.
One is my daily desktop that is running linux mint and loving it since I’ve made the switch.
The other pc is a laptop that I use to troubleshoot other peoples networks / data transfers if they have a bad drive / when I’m traveling. The odd piece of software that is only available / runs on windows. Hasn’t been used in 1 - 3 months and I really should pop it on the network to allow it to phone home.
One thing I did to make life easier, I threw a 2nd cheap graphics card in from a different vendor. That lets me run a small “monitor” vm I mostly use for secondary stuff and switching or configuring the primary VMs.
Grub is not overwriting anything. The boot order might change in BIOS after re-installing. Even a kernel update can do that. I have 5 distros installed, no Windows. And those distros, when updating them, sometimes like to set themselves as first in the boot order list in BIOS. So I just set it back to Refind. I run Grub + Refind, on my main distro. I like options and redundancy.
The “Best” way to deal with the issue is too take the (Loss) Regarding anti-cheat on Linux and bet on single-player games (There are already enough of those and it keeps getting better) It will get even better in the near and far future..
Youre already running Fedora which is one of the closest picks to a real-desktop Windows alternative. There are few of those in my opinion and youre already running it, good job
We also now have Proton 11 already, ready to play your favourite games.
Fedora shouldn’t be doing this. I’ve installed it alongside Windows many times and never had an issue. Fedora’s installer should detect your Windows install and give you the option to install alongside. As far as the Windows bootloader goes, that’s expected. You should see both Fedora and Windows as options in GRUB when booting your system. If for whatever reason you don’t, check your GRUB config to see if os-prober is disabled for some reason.
Also, in your BIOS you should see both the Windows and Fedora bootloaders as options when selecting a boot order.
