Dual booting us viable, if you're curious its good to try linux via dual boot. Windows doesnt break the linux bootloader. The incident referencing was a bug I believe. I know plenty of people who've been dual booting for 2+ years keeping both OSs up to date with no issue.

[–] dditty@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 21 hours ago

My laptop only has one m.2 ssd/slot. I have the ssd partitioned for Linux and windows 11 dual boot. Grub boot loader. I have had it set up this way for 4 years now, and no windows updates have messed up by Linux install or boot loader yet 🤞

[–] AmyAye@nord.pub 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have had Windows update completely obliterate my Linux partitions at least twice.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Do you remember if its happened in the past 2 years? A patch windows put out in 2024 is supposed to fix this.

[–] AmyAye@nord.pub 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

No, I jist run straight Linux (Laptop) or straight Windows (Desktop) now. I don't have a need to dual boot anymore.

If I didn't play Fortnite so much I wouldn't run Windows at all honestly.

[–] witness_me@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 day ago

I’ve had windows nuke my bootloader at least thrice. Stopped dual booting a few years ago so I’m free of that nonsense.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

That wasn't "an incident." The notion of Windows breaking Linux's bootloader has been a known thing for at least a decade.

[–] calango@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I believe dual boot is more feasible when you have more than one drive, so you don’t risk corrupting it. Another option to test a Linux distribution would be using virtual machines

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 1 points 21 hours ago

If you're just testing a distro, then a live-bootable USB is also a great option.

[–] starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago

I have had it break my bootloader when I was dual booting, if it wasn't my main pc then I might risk it but I'm not rolling the dice on if windows decides to break it again.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 4 points 1 day ago

Still it's a really good idea to keep a rescue USB drive handy, for when windows decides to update it's boot loader and blitzes your setup