So I am now writing this from a Fedora 40/Windows 10 dual-booted machine using QOwnNotes on the linux partition. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster as it took me about 3 hrs of troubleshooting to get the dual boot to function.
First some backstory:
A few months ago I decided to dust off my old Dell XPS 13 from way back in college, since I almost never used a laptop and last I used that one, it was barely staying on for 2hrs on battery and lagged like a mfer. Well, I took a random leap back then and decided to install Zorin OS (Ubuntu fork I think?) while wiping the drive completely. I didn't really have much on it except old engineering homework and maybe some cracked programs. Plus all I was going to use it for was some on-the-go coding and for note-taking during my DnD sessions I was finally having in-person.
I was surprised at how well it worked! Linux definitely had some growing pains as I had issue after issue trying to do regular things that I could do with my eyes closed on Windows. I don't remember exactly all the issues but one of them was that my wifi card drivers got completely erased in the migration and installing them again was a royal pain. Not to mention I accidentally pressed the wifi key on the laptop which usually just turns on airplane mode in Windows, but all Zorin OS was telling me was that there was 'no wireless card installed' on my system, which confused me even more. Thankfully the fix was just pressing the button again, don't ask me how long that took me to find out.
This brings me to today:
I guess I got bored waiting for server parts to arrive and my Windows install was working too well for me. So I needed a change. I play games that require kernel-level anti-cheat so uninstalling Windows was unfortunately out of the question, but my goal is to make this linux partition my default, while only booting into Windows when I get the summon from my friends to play League or something.
I decided on Fedora because I heard it was similar to Zorin except that it was much more popular. No other reason really, I was kind of already used to Zorin but did want something a bit more tested.
So here's where the 3hrs of troubleshooting come in: I basically followed this guide for installing, if you care to look, but the problem started when I couldn't shrink my windows partition on my C drive because it kept saying I had 0 space available to shrink even though I had over 500Gb free on the drive! I ran windows disk cleanup, nothing. I installed and ran ccleaner overnight, which somehow took 3hrs to erase just over 2Gb of data, didn't fix it. Then I found some thread on the microsoft forums that told me that I had immovable system files at the very end of the volume. The steps recommended to fix this were to disable system restore, disable the pagefile, disable kernel memory dump, and hybernation mode. I did all this, then was able to shrink the volume to give my Fedora partition a decent 300Gb of space, and I re-enabled the memory dump, pagefile, and system restore options. Hybernation never really worked for me anyways.
Once I had done that I was marvellously able to install Fedora from a boot drive onto that partition and boot into it... but then I had another issue. THERE WAS NO DUAL BOOT MENU. It just instantly booted into fedora while not even allowing me to pick an OS or partition from the Grub boot menu. I started panicking, thinking I had somehow nuked my Windows partition. Thankfully, I could still see the files and this thread showed me that I had probably just installed Fedora in legacy mode because my BiOS was not in 'UEFI Only' mode. (Linux users: why the fuck would Legacy be default and why would Fedora not even present me with a warning or an option to pick the type of install?). So I took the steps recommended, deleted my Fedora partition, reinstalled with UEFI only mode in BiOS, and the grub bootloader would show at my next restart with the option to initiate into Windows! One last step was ensuring that my BiOS had the fedora partition as the boot priority so that it would boot into the Grub bootloader rather than directly into Windows with no prompt and boom! I am now typing this post on my linux partition.
It's quite neat, I've installed some GNOME themes - which are just system themes for y'all who haven't decided to make your computer harder to use - I've installed all my usual dev apps, Discord, and will likely try installing some indie games developed for Linux or even Steam down the line. I just know for sure my Windows partition will remain as my gamer system cause live-service games are my only social life (kidding).
Cheers!
_ _ _
Thoughts? Send me an email!
kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com
Feel free to remain anonymous and send it from a secure mailer!
