Has anyone here tried this? Does Win10 play well with others even when say feature updates come along?
GRUB 2 is used for the boot loader. It is best to run the OS's on two separate drives.
Is that recommendation for simplicity's sake or something else?
I'm no stranger to dual-booting with multiple operating systems on the same drive but it's been a while since I last did it.
If you can do separate drives I would, makes it easier to manage changes and failures.
Does it though? I haven't had much experience of OS failure when dual-booting but whether you've got two drives each with their own OS or one drive with both OS's, the boot manager has to go one one of the drives and the other is likely useless without it (from an OS boot perspective).
Also, I meant to ask already - I assume when you say you've set up dual boot, I assume you mean Win10 and Linux; with GRUB as the bootloader have you had any trouble with Win10 feature updates?
Gaming? Doubtful, no?
I pass a graphics card through to the Windows VM for games.
Have you ever had any compatibility issues that way?
I've dual-booted before, I know what it's like (though I got on perfectly well with a Win98 + WinNT4 dual boot, a good few other configurations didn't work out for the reasons you describe). This time though I'm considering the fact that I'm running Win7 as my only OS, that stops being supported in 2020 which I regard to be an absolute stop date personally. Unless MS's policies with regard to Win10 change dramatically I can't see me changing to it unless I really can't make Linux work for me.
In the past my Linux experiences have been marred by (application) software installation and updates. After an experience with a customer's computer (they were running a massively out-of-date version of Mint), I convinced myself to give Linux another try, but to evaluate it according to past experiences. I took a 2016 release of Lubuntu, tried a few things with it and then told it to do an OS update itself and everything worked out. Given that I'm not generally trying out betas of LibreOffice or anything like that (even on Win7 right now I'm running 5.3.x rather than the latest stable branch release), I think I'm happy to just go with the flow with regard to updates.
With regard to slow boot times though, SSDs are obscenely fast compared to the HDD boot times of yesteryear. On the occasion that I reboot Win7 it's finished booting in less than 10 seconds, and when I've dual-booted before VMs weren't really a thing (or mainstream thing) yet.
Your comment about boot loaders is the reason why I asked if you/anyone had any experience with Win10 doing such things The idea of having to fix the boot process of maybe two operating systems twice a year would make my blood boil.
I also very much want Linux to work because with regard to that customer's computer recently, getting it up and running with an up-to-date version of Linux was at least half the price of what it would have been if Windows was the only choice. The computer was ancient so it would have gone to the scrap heap because investing that much in it would have made no sense. If I learn enough about Linux to realistically offer it as an alternative to customers who are used to Windows yet have no particular requirement for it, that potentially means more work for me (and knowledge wise I would branch out considerably rather than the tiny increments I add to my Windows knowledge these days). I was also impressed with Lubuntu having an idle memory footprint of 150-300MB as opposed to >1GB
I think I still ought to list all the tasks I perform on Windows to make sure I've got all my bases covered should I make this move.
I have in UEFI menu two entries. Each loads something from EFI System Partition (where Microsoft and Linux distro have their own subdirectories). One of the entries is the default. In order to access the other I have to hit UEFI Boot Menu key.UEFI and GRUB 2 work very well together.
Hmmm . . . I'd always wanted an option for something similar to the KINGWIN HDD-PS6 Hard Drive Power Switch.I have had Windows 10 and Solus Linux dual boot on my computer for a year and works very well. But i rarely used Windows 10 and did not like the idea of the Win10 data drive spinning for no reason. Looked into options and i found the Kingwin data switch on Amazon. Works really well. Fits into the DVD slot. 6 lighted switches on front.
I have since stopped dual booting. I now have Linux on drive 1. Win10 (boot ssd) on drive 2 and data on drive 3. I have a 4th drive for distro hopping and testing. This way i now have all drives separated and off when i do not need them.
Sure not as convenient as dual boot, have to shut down, get up and push a couple of buttons. Reboot and which ever OS i wanted is now running. Would also be handy if you want to use a drive for backup. That way it only on when you want to use it or to back up.