I’m looking to finally use Linux properly and I’m planning to dual boot my laptop. There’s enough storage to go around, and while I’m comfortable messing around I’d rather not have to run and buy a new device before school while fixing my current one.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VaIgbTOvAd0
This was the general guide I was planning to follow, just with KDE Plasma (or another KDE). I was going to keep windows the default, and boot into Linux as needed when I had time to learn and practice.
I assume it should be the near similar process for KDE Plasma?
I’m ok with things going wrong with the Linux install, but I’d like to keep the Windows install as safe as possible.
You must log in or register to comment.
Windows and Linux keeps track of time differently. One stores the time in your current time zone. The other stores the GMT time and adds an offset. I forget which one does what but it results in your time being wrong each time you switch from Linux to Windows or vice versa. You can search for how to fix it, its not very hard, or you can just ignore it and reset your clock each time you switch OS.
I don’t think that’s the case anymore.
I just checked, the time in the UEFI BIOS is in UTC, yet both Linux and Windows 10 display the local time correctly as an offset to UTC. I didn’t have to do anything special for that.
Edit:
So I looked a bit deeper into it, and this is apparently controlled by a registry key called
RealTimeIsUniversalin[]. You can paste the text below in a .reg file and then import it to set the parameter:Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation] "RealTimeIsUniversal"=dword:00000001I confirmed that this setting exists on my system, but I have no memory of ever manually setting this parameter. It’s documented in the Arch wiki though, so it’s possible that I did set it and forgot about it.
In any case, if you do a fresh Windows install and your time differs between Linux and Windows , this is what you should check.
It is with Windows 10 and Mint. I booted into Mint a few days ago, and when I switched back to Windows, the time was wrong.
Apparently it’s easy to fix, but I keep forgetting while I’m in Mint >.<
You can also fix it by running the following command on your Linux machine:
timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock
You could but this as an autostart script:
cat > ~/.config/autostart/adjust-time <Thank you :)
The video missed one small, but very important thing: You need to disable fast boot in windows before mounting your windows partition in linux, otherwise it will get corrupted.
The reason for that is that windows doesn’t actually shut down if you tell it to by default and it leaves the drive in a dirty state. Windows itself can pick that back up and boot off of it, but linux won’t detect it. If you leave fast boot on, windows will run chkdsk on the next boot after using linux.
I found that out the hard way and got to not use my computer while it ran chkdsk on my 4TB HDD. It took 15 hours.
Always install Windows first then Linux in dualboot, otherwise microsoft messes with your boot area. Have a separate boot partition for Linux and some distros have foreign OS probe and will auto setup your grub menu to chainload to windows. This stops Windiws messing with your Linux boot partition since it has no clue it exists
Have a think about how you want to arrange your data. While you can access windows partitions and files under Linux (and vise versa), it’s better not to be constantly be mounting your windows C drive from another OS. Plus, if you’re mid-update, or had to restart suddenly, windows will happily mark your drive as read-only.
I use 4 partitions for a dual boot. Sizes are based on a 1TB drive.
- Windows C (100GB or so, OS drive). Only mounted by Linux if I have a big problem.
- Windows D (NTFS formatted, my main storage partition. Mounted all the time by Linux. 700GB or so)
- Linux root (50GB or so, EX4 formatted)
- Linux storage (remaining space, EX4 formatted used for big programs, games, home folder)
This way, Windows OS is separate, main storage is accessible to both without tripping over permissions, linux root drive is separate from storage so reinstalling isn’t so painful if something goes very wrong.
This is probably some of the best advice here. Keep the drives (if possible, if not partitions) each OS is on separate from the other. Have a 3rd drive (or partition) as the bulk of your storage that both can see and use.
I’d also suggest reversing your plan of mainly using windows and hopping to linix when you want to and make it Linux default and windows when you have to. You’ll learn more immersing yourself in Linux that way, and you’ll find whatever issues or software that force you back to windows (if any). The other way around you’ll feel that Linux doesn’t do anything you need it to and likely spend very little time in it at all. Habits are hard to change.
Keep your Linux partition backed up! Windows update deleted my EXT4 partition and all Linux data on my laptop. (No, it wasn’t a Grub problem, the partition was gone.) There are reports this Microsoft BS going back years.
When was this?
About 7 months ago. A Google search will turn up other reports of the issue.
Some day you may find your machine booting into linux without displaying a grub menu. You were promised a menu giving you boot options. Where is it? The problem may be your grub timeout is 0. Set the timeout in
/etc/default/gruband then runupdate-grub. See section 6.1 of theinfo grubmanual.Unless you have a reason to keep Windows, for example some software you depend on that doesn’t run under Linux, just get rid of windows. There’s no real reason to keep it around if you don’t need it for a particular reason.
It’s hard to predict when a course will require some software that’s windows only. Either that or support (from TAs and profs) will be specific to Mac & Windows.
Thought a good compromise might be to keep it
Backup all your data
That you eventually delete the Windows partition.
Boot with a live USB image first. Check and see if everything is working. Don’t be married to the first Linux distro you try.
That’s fair, I’ll take some time to explore them :)
On the other hand, try not to get into distro hopping hell
If your laptop has room for a second drive, it’s easiest to put Linux on its own drive.
Unfortunately there’s just the one slot. I’m going to keep that in mind for future purchases
So then if the drive is big enough, use the shitty windows partition manager and shrink the windows partition, leaving as much space as you want for Linux.
Also you can try Linux on a Live ISO or even install it on a USB stick, but with UEFI thats a pain.
Ventoy on a fast usb stick or better a nvme case (cheap one + 256Gb is easily sub $100 and who can’t use screaming fast external storage) via a usb3+ port is pretty godlike and really convenient.
But ventoy is not persistent right?
The specific ISO/distros can be (relatively) easily made persistent if they’re built with that in mind, there’s a list of choices in that link. I have a custom Arch ISO on mine that was a doddle to enable persitence on…
Thanks! Interesting!
