Kaoss

So, I've found myself in a strange predicament.

This last week or two I started using Linux. To make a long story short as to why, I decided I wanted to do a fresh install of Win10 and somehow managed to mess up doing just that. And I installed Linux Mint as a sort of intermediary until I got windows back on.

However, I've found myself actually enjoying my time on Mint, and I'm heavily considering throwing Kubuntu on or Pop OS and giving those a shot. Thus far the proton experience has been stellar, and I just need to access a friends computer so I can make an offline regkey for FL Studio. Really the only things that don't seem to run are things like Valorant, Siege, basically the usual suspects.

So I'm contemplating actively dual booting and seeing how I like the experience. However the hyper logical part of my brain is like fucking screaming that going back to windows makes sense, everything already works there and I don't really gain anything other than a greater level of desktop customization (which, NGL, has been my whole reason for wanting to use Linux from the get go. You can only get close to this level with some apps like Windhawk.)

I guess thoughts from any dual-boot runners or Linux enthusiasts?

Jul 19, 2025 at 3:12amWeb
Show threadFrost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄Jul 19, 2025

@KaossTheFox We've been rocking Linux for a while, we came from the Mac world instead of the Windows world actually.

For a while we were even TRIPLE booting!

also if you want EVEN MOAR customization, try the KDE desktop (you can probably even install KDE on your existing Mint, I can't remember what the package is called, it might be plasma-desktop?), we run KDE and love it

Dual booting might be helpful but it might also make it harder to stay on Linux. I'd totally recommend staying on Linux for general stuff since yeah, it's just... more respectful.

Windows might "just work" but it also does the typical Windows Things. And funnily enough it also introduces /more/ complexity and non-just-workness in some areas, like game controllers. On Linux you don't have to care whether a controller "uses XInput or DirectInput", that's a Windows driver thing and nothing specific to the actual controller, on Linux everything uses evdev and works with everything!

Show threadKaossJul 19, 2025

@IceWolf That is true, and reading about some of the moves MS is making on pulling some things out of the kernel level for security reasons, I have some hope that even those games that, admittedly I miss, might not be locked out for too long. Still a while though.

Triple booting sounds absolutely nuts lol, I remember as a kid dreaming about a setup like that. If for no other reason than my need to explore new things.

Funny you mention non-just-workness - I've been trying to install win11 ever since I got Mint running, and the amount of barriers I keep encountering is absolutely nuts. Now the USB won't even boot... unless it has Linux on it, in which case it boots into a live preview easily. What the hell lmao.

Show threadFrost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄Jul 19, 2025

@KaossTheFox hahaha yeppp!

They make making a bootable USB stick with Windows unnecessarily difficult because "oh you can just use the windows media creation tool that does that for you"

whereas Linux they do the fiddly bits for that /while creating the ISO/ so that it, y'know, actually works.

it's not even hard, with EFI boot! in theory you could even make a FAT partition and drop the Windows installer files on it, but then you run into the issue that some of the files are too big for FAT's 4GB-per-file limit (there's a "wimsplit" command or something to get around that but... ugghhhh seriously). Microsoft could do that easily but they don't bother.

Show threadFrost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄Jul 19, 2025
@KaossTheFox and triple booting WAS kinda nuts, haha! We already had Mac and Windows (with Boot Camp, the official dual-boot-Windows tool at the time) and then we went and installed Linux.
Show threadKaossJul 19, 2025
@IceWolf And that's the really hilarious part too, I even used the media creation tool after Rufus proved to be unhelpful. And it still won't boot! I would laugh if this wasn't a several billion dollar company.
Show threadFrost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄Jul 19, 2025
@KaossTheFox Oh yikes!!! Nah go ahead and laugh, them being a several billion dollar company just makes them MORE laughworthy.
Show threadRaleskJul 19, 2025

@KaossTheFox thirding the "don't reinstall, just install whatever desktop you want" notions — as far as ubuntu/kubuntu/xubuntu etc. are concerned they only differ in what they install as default, but otherwise they're supported by the same package repository. Not sure how ubuntu Mint is, but the same applies — if it's in the repo, you can just install it.

As for dual booting with Windows — it should be relatively easy, especially these days when booting various operating systems is supported by the BIOS UEFI. One thing that's annoying about Windows is that it defaults to managing the system clock in local time while Linux and macOS and everyone else uses UTC. That can be fixed with a Registry key. (see https://superuser.com/questions/975717/does-windows-10-support-utc-as-bios-time)

Does Windows 10 support UTC as BIOS time?

EDIT 2015-SEP-30: Seems I actually ended up with localtime enabled in Linux somehow, probably as a consequence of a reinstall some time ago. I switched Linux to UTC and now my configuration seems ...

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