Mastodawn

About to take the leap into Linux for my home workstation. Got an extra drive and everything.

After being happy with Ubuntu Sway Remix on my work laptop – its opinionated choices introduced me to a lot of new software and concepts – I would go for Arch next. Except maybe in the form of CachyOS, to get an easier start.

Now here's the real downside: I'll have to dual boot. Some of my audio hardware relies on proprietary Windows drivers. It gets worse: I want to keep my current Windows 10 installation intact, and I cannot physically unplug the drive. It's an NVMe that's mounted under an arguably oversized CPU cooler. Bonus points for having the Linux drive mounted/available in Windows and vice versa.

If my experience with Linux so far has told me one thing, it's that boot loaders are very fickle and dangerous to mess with.

Is there any way to actually do what I want to do without risking complete data loss?

#linuxgaming #archlinux #dualboot #grub #windows10

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Nex Carter Jul 4

@garra "Without risking complete data loss" might be the breaking thing...
I would backup my whole drive...

Btw.: I would suggest Endeavour OS as a great start into Arch. It has everything an Arch needs but works fine OOB :)
there is already a big community around it and as far as i can tell it works great for me.

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garra

@NexCarter I'm not sure a full functional backup is even possible with Windows. Critical data is mirrored either way, but I need a functional fallback system if my Linux adventures lead me astray.

Hence the second hard drive for Linux specifically, to leave it in a self-contained box. But.. boot loaders are scary.