this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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First post here, if this place isn't for tech support, I'll remove it.

I’ve heard dual booting Linux and Windows isn’t a good idea because Windows Update will nuke the Linux boot loader, so I’ve avoided doing that.

For a very long, technical, and complicated reason, I still need Windows because one piece of software that I absolutely MUST have is only compatible with Windows. No, there is no alternative software available for my use case; none, zero, not any, at all. I’ve already tried running it within many different VMs, using many different hypervisors, and I’ve already tried Wine; they aren’t an option, the software isn’t stable in those cases. I don’t want to get in the weeds about it, so please just accept that I NEED some version of Windows installed.

Since Windows 10 doesn’t receive updates anymore, can I dual boot Linux and Windows 10 without worrying about whether Windows Update will break anything?

I intend to keep Windows on one drive and Linux on another. Windows would only be used when I need to run this one specific program, which is maybe five or ten hours per week. The rest of the time, I’d be using Linux.

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[–] happyHarryHardon@fedinsfw.app 1 points 5 days ago

So if you have two actual HD's you can install linux on one and keep windows on the other without any issue of windows nuking the bootloader as long as you install the linux bootloader on the linux HD. In bios you select the linux partition to boot from and the linux bootloader should give you a choice of operating systems at boot.

Where you run into issues is when you are using a single HD and partitioning windows and linux on the same drive.