[GTALUG] Dual boot

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Gron Arthur via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
| 
| Thinking of buying a Dell 3571 and making it dual boot with Windows and
| Debian. Main reason for Windows is, I want Nikon's ViewNX software for my
| DSLR camera and can't for the life of me figure out how to run it off an
| emulator.
| 
| Does anyone see an issue with a setting up a dual boot?

The Precision 3571 comes with an NVidia GPU.  I find them annoying because 
of lack of open source drivers.  The closed source drivers work amazingly 
well considering that they are out-of-tree.  I don't need a discrete GPU 
but perhaps you do.

My computers usually come with Windows.  For those computers, I almost
always install Linux without deleting Windows.

I find it easy to set up dual boot, but that may well be due to lots
of practice.  There are often little problems that I know how to deal
with.  Here are a few:

- Windows, by default, potentially leaves the filesystems in an
  inconsistent state when it is shut down!

  To fix this, on Windows:

	Control Panel:
	Hardware and Sound:
	Power Options
	Choose what the power button does:

	click "change settings that are currently unavailable"

	Under "Shutdown Settings"
	UN-check "Turn on fast startup"

	click "save changes"


- how to make room for Linux on the disk.  Windows can resize filesystems 
  but it won't release more than 50%.  You probably want more released.

  1. boot a live Linux system and use gparted to shrink Windows partitions 
     to make enough space.  I generally leave Windows about 100G

  2. boot Windows and ask it to fix the filesystem that you shrunk.
     (gparted leaves something not quite right but Windows knows how to 
     fix it)

  3. boot the Linux install medium and proceed to install.


Why do I use dual boot?

- warranty support almost always requires Windows

- I paid for it, why throw it away?  See "Sunk Cost Fallacy"

- most systems require Windows for firmware updates.
  It used to be that you could do firmware updates from a bootable
  DOS floppy or USB stick but that's almost dead.
  Some vendors support Linux through fwupd.

- once in a blue moon I have something that I want to use Windows for.
  That means I only need to have Windows on one computer, not many.

Summary: mostly habit.