First post here, if this place isn’t for tech support, I’ll remove it.

I’ve heard dual booting Linux and Windows isn’t a good idea because Windows Update will nuke the Linux boot loader, so I’ve avoided doing that.

For a very long, technical, and complicated reason, I still need Windows because one piece of software that I absolutely MUST have is only compatible with Windows. No, there is no alternative software available for my use case; none, zero, not any, at all. I’ve already tried running it within many different VMs, using many different hypervisors, and I’ve already tried Wine; they aren’t an option, the software isn’t stable in those cases. I don’t want to get in the weeds about it, so please just accept that I NEED some version of Windows installed.

Since Windows 10 doesn’t receive updates anymore, can I dual boot Linux and Windows 10 without worrying about whether Windows Update will break anything?

I intend to keep Windows on one drive and Linux on another. Windows would only be used when I need to run this one specific program, which is maybe five or ten hours per week. The rest of the time, I’d be using Linux.

  • frongt@lemmy.zip
    31·
    2 days ago

    A lot of people say separate drives is fine. It might be. How much do you trust Windows to not fuck around with other drives? Drive order is not deterministic. If one day something changes (windows update, bios update, drive firmware update, or one of the drives just happens to respond slowly) and they get read in a different order, can you guarantee that Windows won’t try to install a boot loader to that drive?

    Yes, it’s supposed to only do it on the drive you install it to, but I wouldn’t trust it. Maybe get a cheap old laptop to pull out on those days?

    And Windows 10 isn’t officially getting general updates, but there are regular updates released for people with extended security update licenses. I wouldn’t be surprised if they release an update to the general public outside of that program if there’s a really bad vulnerability, too.

    I’m curious, though, what about the software is unstable under a VM?