Follow-up video to https://lemmy.world/post/32690521

Spoiler alert: the main reason he says the experience “hasn’t been great” is because shortly before posting the video his Linux install mysteriously broke and he had no idea why. Therefore, he recommended dual-booting Windows just in case.

Cue sea of comments explaining that the reason for the error he was getting was that Windows screwed up his bootloader (i.e. the problem was caused by dual-booting to begin with, LOL).

  • NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.comEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    Biggest downside is Windows always rebooting after updates, and if I don’t sit there, it boots back into Linux as it’s the first option in Grub.

    This is why I edited Grub to not timeout and instead wait for me to make a selection.

    Can be done by running

    sudo vim /etc/default/grub

    Can also use nano or some other editor than vim too.

    And changing GRUB_TIMEOUT=X to GRUB_TIMEOUT=-1 or a larger value to give you more time if you prefer to have it timeout eventually. -1 disables the countdown to auto select entirely.

    And then run

    update-grub

    To have the changes confirmed.

    I do this because I use Windows about half and Linux the other half so letting me make my decision works best for me.

    • MudMan@fedia.io
      52·
      3 days ago

      You can also set up Grub to default to your last boot. I forget the exact setting name, but it’s a Google away. That’s what the guy in the video did, too.

      • rustyredox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        Also, if you’re using EFI, you can use something like efibootmgr to select which entry to use on next boot up. Handy if you want to swap between OS installs without breaking out a remote KVM or hassle with GRUB monitoring all your drives.

        efibootmgr(8): change EFI Boot Manager - Linux man page https://linux.die.net/man/8/efibootmgr

        • MudMan@fedia.io
          3·
          3 days ago

          Honestly, the whole thing should be way more standardized, handled directly from BIOS without having to interrupt the boot and support fast booting instead of bringing up a menu every time. It’s weird that crappy, cheap ARM handhelds with Android/Linux dual boot handle this better than x64 devices

          On Linux you can already boot to Windows (Bazzite even installs a script that does this into your Steam library to enable easy switching from Game Mode). I am not sure if there’s something readily available to do this on Windows, but either way it’s a massive waste of time to boot into one thing to then boot into the other. It’s even a waste of time to have to step through any menus at all to select a boot option.