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Hello folks!
Sorry if this is covered else where (probably is) in the wiki or in another thread, searching dual boot on the wiki and in the forums wasn't fruitful. Google searches typically return reddit or ubuntu forums which have some good info but not fully what I am looking for. I am more so looking for words of wisdom from people who've done this and may be able to clue me into some potential issues I could run into and some general "do's" and "don'ts"
I am currently running Arch as my daily driver on my laptop (Legion Pro 5 16IRX8)
Kernel: 6.12.11-273-tkg-pds
Bootloader: GRUB
Greeter: SDDM
WM: Hyprland
Drive: 2TB Samsung 990 Pro NVMe Drive is configured with LVM on LUKS (cryptsetup was ran on partition 3 before creating volume group with 2 logical volumes, root and home) partition 1 is efi, partition 2 is boot.
Secure boot is not enabled
The laptop came with windows installed on whatever drive lenovo installed, I never booted the drive....but removed it, popped in the 990 and installed arch. Yes, I can always remove my 990 and install the drive that came with the laptop but taking apart the laptop to change out the drive so I can change the OS is rather annoying and then I need to fix GRUB every time I go back to linux. For whatever reason weather I use UUIDs or not in /etc/default/grub or not, if i remove my drive with arch on it, install a different drive with a different distro or windows on it, then reinstall my drive with arch my disk name changes and I need to run grub-mkconfig at a minimum. Once I had to fix /etc/fstab and /etc/default/grub before I could boot in again.
I have a second 2TB Samsung 990 Pro NVMe Drive that I want to use for Windows 11 as I do not want Arch and Windows on the same drive. According to all documentation I have read, "best practice" is to install windows 1st, then install linux. I can always remove my drive with Arch in it and setup windows on the other but I am curious about what could happen if I do that and then have both drives installed. Will I be able to pick what OS I want to boot? If so, is GRUB going to give me the option to boot windows with os-prober in the same way it allows me to choose the standard linux kernel or linux tkg? Would it be better to leave my drive with arch in the laptop, add the 2nd drive and just install windows on the 2nd disk?
End goal is to have Arch on /dev/nvme0n1 and windows on /dev/nvme1n1 then be able to pick the desired OS from Grub with os-prober.
Reasoning why... my son wants to play Fortnite and Call of Duty :rolleyes
--Thanks!
**UPDATE**
I just went for it based on combined documentation I've read.
Knowing I already had os-prober installed, I opened /etc/default/grub and uncommented
#GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=falsethen ran updated the grub config
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfgshutdown, installed the windows drive from lenovo, went back into BIOS and set NVME0n1 (Arch) to primary. Powered on, windows (NVME1n1) able to be selected from GRUB and booted normally. Rebooting brings me back to grub where arch is default and I needed to select windows if thats where I want to be. When going back to Arch GRUB was able to successfully run cryptsetup and ask to unlock lv_root after I entered the password.
.....I clearly was over thinking this! ... nothing to see here....
Last edited by live4thamuzik (2025-01-31 03:12:47)
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not sure about that but both fortnite and call of duty is available on xbox cloud gaming which is browser based and works on arch
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Ohh, I did not know that! Does that require a Xbox game pass subscription? How is the performance on running a game like that in a browser? This laptop only has a 4070 mobile GPU so I'm already at a disadvantage. He would also want roblox which I have read works with grapejuice but I have never been successful. He plays that on his iPad for the time being.
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