Its been a while since i ran Linux on my own computer, but lately i’ve been trying some distros with VirtualBox to see what i like, i’m particularly fond of Debian with Gnome (i also like Elementary, Fedora and Netrunner) and wanted to use it as my daily OS instead of Windows 10, thing is, i game on my machine and for that my OS of choice is Windows 10, therefore i’d like to keep it alongside Linux.
Is there anything particularly against dual booting Linux and Windows on the same machine? I mostly see people running Windows 10 on a VM inside Linux instead of doing a dual boot.
Specs, if it helps:
Mobo: ASRock Fatal1ty X370 Professional (with a Ryzen 7 1700)
Linux boot drive: Kingston UV500 240gb M.2 SATA
Windows boot drive: Intel 760p 256gb M.2 NVME
Mass storage drive (to be used by both OSs): Toshiba X300 4tb
Gaming on linux has come a long way.
it really depends on what you’re playing.
If you can stick to steam/GOG, linux really is the way, especially debian, and it’s off shoots.
Personally im using a run of the mill ubuntu installation, have all my “work” software, along side some steam, and lutris, and there’s no real big headaches anymore.
most games work, some dont, but it isn’t the end of the world, atm i am playing some skyrim.
If i were you id go buy a cheap m.2(WD green ~250gb should be cheap now a days, proberly ~20 bucks give and take some), and try a fresh install, without dual boot, and figure out which suits your needs the best, windows, or linux.
Id advice against dual booting, i haven’t tried it myself, but MS has a history of just not giving a flying F… when they do updates, and boot records/partitions gets lost.
I think I misinterpreted what dual boot meant.
I would install Linux on a separate SSD (the Kingston UV500 I mentioned on the specs) and keep Windows on my Intel 760p
That’s good news! Most of my games are from those two platforms, i only have some on Uplay
The system still needs a GRUB boot menu to be initialized and run first on boot. From past experience, I don’t trust Windows to not mess that up or wipe it out.
Even if i run Linux on a completely different drive?
The MS update system can be really hostile to any system they’re not 100% in control of.
the reason i adviced the cheap ssd try out is just to avoid headaches, if you wanna run the risk switching between OS’es, it could, or could not go bad, hell if i know, i keep the two deperate, but windows 10 does have a history of “accidentally” overwriting data/partitions/boot sectors when updating. If your partition, or boot sector is overwritten on your linux harddrive, you’re in for a bunch of fun recovering/reinstalling, making those 20 bucks seem like a cheap investment :p.
That I’m not sure of. You can always try it and see how it goes.
One of the reasons I recommend against dual-booting is that by running Linux as the main OS, it forces you to learn and fix issues that arise instead of switching back to windows in a pinch. 
Yeah, that’s i thought about doing, i think i wouldn’t trust running both on the same drive with different partitions.
The UV500 costs about that much around here, its on sale currently.
I have been dual booting in the way you are suggesting, for the reasons you do for about 2 years. It has had it’s ups and downs. It does have issues. I have not had the issue of windows over writing data, but I do know many people have had that happen. I would highly suggest backing up any and all data that is of any importance to you on the regular. If you play lots of games for hours a day after a few weeks you will most likely fine yourself in windows most of the time. It is really easy to fall into the trend of playing a game for an hour on Windows then just never rebooting into Linux to just browse the web or do something simple. Most people that I see that dual boot end up either only using windows or only using Linux and occasionally booting into the other and dealing with lots of updates. It isn’t necessarily bad, just a pit fall worth warning you about.
That is something i didn’t take in consideration, but you’re completely right.
Most of the times i game with the Pc i have it hooked up to my TV and it stays like that for hours and hours
I am not saying don’t try it. Just be safe and another good idea would be to throw it on a laptop or a raspberry pi. If you just want to learn Linux you do not have to have a massively powerful PC for it. Also if you are looking into the Information Technology field as a career the issues caused (if they do not cause lose of data that actually hurts you) can teach you a lot about troubleshooting Linux and Windows. So I mean the issues caused can be looked at as a positive if your a bit crazy like myself and have time for it. Saying that my person experience with dual booting I have caused most issues and it has been relatively smooth. in my case playing with Linux has basically replaced most games for me it can be lots of fun if you get into it and the community is really fun to interact with.
Because, its more convenient to not have to reboot. Dual boot is easier to do. And in many cases will cost you less money. Since for that Windows Gaming VM inside Linux setup, you kinda sorta are required to have a spare GPU, witch you may not have, if you dont have one integrated into your processor. And to switch input(s)/outputs(s) you also might want a kvm switch, witch are really god damn expensive for something that seems so simple. 
Looking glass is trying to solve that kvm problem. But Im not very informed on how well thats working yet.
I dont think this is a very common problem even (these days) installing it on the same drive. I have 2 systems running dual boot one of them is a notebook with only one ssd and the other one Windows installed its boot loader onto the Linux SSD (because it just seems to automatically do that if it finds and EFI partition anywhere, wasnt planning on doing that). Either way both systems are running fine. Never broke so far.
So my experience with EFI dual boot has been no breaking of anything ever. Though your milage may vary.
Dual booting is fine. Install Linux on a separate disk and put the bootloader on that disk, then use your bios to choose what os to boot. Turn off fast boot in windows and always shut it down so you can cleanly access that disk if you need to.
Personally I dont really bother with dual booting. I have dedicated machines for this purpose. Dedicated ubuntu server, Dedicated windows gaming machine, dedicated NAS box, etc. I want simple and just works, rebooting to mess with something in linux isnt it.
Been dual booting for 15+ years. Dual booting using separate drives is about as easy as it will get, just want grub on the Linux drive so Windows can have Boot Manager on the drive Windows is on. Most problems I’ve seen come from people using Windows BOOTMGR for booting Linux and some times when windows isn’t the first drive and it decides to over write the first partition of the first drive on an update. Keeps it so you can just tell BIOS what drive to load first and can us the BIOS Boot menu for the OS you use least.
this too ^^
if you can, for example
sata_0 = windows drive
sata_1 = linux drive
I’ve never had windows overwrite my linux bootloader.
Last year i tried doing that in our sheep dip computer at the job just so we could have a Linux partition (at the time i chose Gnome Ubuntu) to properly format usb thumb drives that sometimes get infected.
Just like you said, one daily randomly the Windows partition had taken the entire extension of the drive and erased the Linux partition.
Thankfully we didn’t have anything important on that partition (it was the sheep dip machine after all).
I saw this video with Wendell and Linus and after the GPU passthrough part i just came out thinking “why would anybody do that instead of just installing Windows on a separated drive?”.
Not having to reboot is quite fine but at this day and age of fast and cheap and SSDs i really don’t mind rebooting my system.
Isn’t this related to that “turn off hard drive in X minutes” option under Advanced Power Settings? I always opt for leaving the hard drive on just i don’t have to wait for it to spin up again when i use it.