How to Dualboot and Multiboot Linux (and Windows)

[@tiitulitii]

Finally somebody is telling about real multi-booting Linux distros instead of just dual-booting Windows and Linux on a virtual machine!!

[@splits8999]

why would you though

[@graydhd8688]

Cuz some don't want to use a VM? Not a crazy concept​@@splits8999

[@herkatron]

@@splits8999 Because it's fun

[@splits8999]

@@herkatron makes sense

[@p0xygen]

@@splits8999 I want to distro hop, but I also want to keep a different installation of a distro around that I can keep going back to.

[@alastairstaunton7081]

Crisp and clear, no shouting or whatsupping, no ums or errs, and enough info to enable me to use it with some confidence. Subscribed.

[@pj85438]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! You made something that was new to me that seemed so hard and complicated actually extremely easy and enjoyable. Thanks for sharing the extra bit about what ifs and whys. Thanks for sharing your knowledge

[@El.Duder-ino]

100% agree, thank you for this guide!👏👏

[@jim7smith]

You got a new sub, your clearly enunciated instructions with a consistent volume level throughout are a refreshing change for me. This is the third video I have watched of yours, it is the best multi-booting video I have ever had the pleasure of watching.

[@chromerims]

The way how Manjaro, Ubuntu and Fedora bootloaders interplay 👍 . . . really good that you showed these details. Thank you Dorian. Kindest regards, friends and neighbours.

[@user-ts7ct2dt1x]

moral of the video : *sudo update-grub*

[@wojcieche.2080]

Thank you for this video. Finally - so many detailed and advanced tips here for multi-boot - not a high-level stuff like in other YT videos, that promise much but deliver little. 👍

[@bodmitri]

Amazing video! Awesome job! I always had challenges understanding the dual-boot process but this video makes it a cake-walk. Huge thank you!

[@geraltofrivia__w.w.7513]

This is one of the best Videos for Multi OS Guide. Helped me a lot, and rEFInd is a must. I recommend setting a command to deactivate Grub from installing itself back when you do a system update.

[@utubepunk]

Why?

[@geraltofrivia__w.w.7513]

@@utubepunk what ?

[@juanpinzon996]

Thank u for being a great human being and taking ti to help all of us noobs out cheers

[@chrs-wltrs]

Gparted live! *That's* what I was missing, thanks so much! I'm trying to dual boot my system for windows/Mint, but I already have mint installed, and I was wondering about how I was going to keep the mint settings that I've already set without formatting and re-installing everything. Now I know how I can format and resize the partitions I need, cheers and thank you! :D

[@Doriandotslash]

Yes it's a very handy tool to keep on a USB stick for working on partitions and also doing repairs when things go wrong. Glad you found it helpful!

[@DanielBrosman08211986]

@@Doriandotslash Can't you just keep on creating VHDs like for an example you can call the first VHD Apple and another one elementeryOS and Android, and so on and Install all of them in there apocopate VHDs and choose the install on hard drive option, Will creating VHD slow down PC?

[@Doriandotslash]

@@DanielBrosman08211986 Well, if you're just using virtual machines then yes you can create as many as you want. But this is for installing on hardware in different partitions.

[@geraltofrivia__w.w.7513]

@@Doriandotslash Waiting for a video guide for Virtual KVM Whonix. If possible please consider.

[@TSPhotoAtlanta]

@@Doriandotslash I tried Ventoy to use different ISO’s loaded onto one USB stick. It then shows its startup menu system which can be modified with a tool it comes with that writes a properly formatted .json file: all kinds of choices, or it can be very simple. The tool ran a bg-service on windows, and the editing that produced the finished .json was done in a web-browser looking at a local page interacting with the service to rewrite the .json file (instructions, essentially.). It’s worked with any of the bootable ISO images I’ve tried so far. I think it would work with gparted and Hirens ISO’s. I’ll be trying those next. The EFI info you present is filtered into usability, invaluable, thanks!

[@HaroldCrews]

The easiest fix for the end-user until the developers fix the naming of the distro for the grub menu is to use grub customizer. Using that app enables you to go in and change the names of the distro as it shows up in the grub menu as well as remove the advanced boot options, the default boot, and the menu display duration. It is a gui app and not a CLI. If you dual boot or multi-boot it is a must have.

[@utubepunk]

Thanks for the tip.

[@guilhermedanielcristan5238]

damn... the most clear and complete guide on dualboot out there.. tks brow, amazing job

[@-_-Girthbrooks-_-]

This has been the video I’ve needed for ages, Thank you.

Damn such a lovely and concise video, awesome!

[@Paulo-pv8db]

Thank you!!! Your videos are so good. I noticed you haven't posted vidoes in a while. Hope you are ok and maybe continue posting new videos that really helpful to almost 100k people!

[@Doriandotslash]

Thanks! Yes things are fine. Just been busy with real life since my 2nd child was born and took a break.

[@Paulo-pv8db]

@@Doriandotslash That's awesome... Totally justified, congratulations!!!

[@ali-dalloul]

Amazing!! You rock dude, one of very few videos were you understand everything explained

[@MemoGrafix]

Thank You for not speaking another language and having Your title in English.

[@RedSntDK]

Put this video on thinking I knew enough about bootloaders, but nope, it wasn't until I watched this that it finally clicked for me. Because I grew up with DOS and Windows 3.11 and my first personal PC ran Windows 95, I've just always assumed that the last OS you installed would write over the boot loader like in those olden times. I messed around with Linux in the mid noughties and also played around with dualbooting and same thing, overwritten bootloader. It's not until now I really see the advantage of UEFI.

[@scally9341]

this video is such a godsend. Fedora’s Anaconda is so whacky the way it doesn’t just take you to the traditional partitioning GUI. As a (somewhat) beginner this video probably prevented me from wasting about 3 hours. Subbed.

[@TheBrainReal]

Thank you so much! After watching this, I am able to set up any hard disk with uefi myself, and now I also know how uefi actually works!

[@Doriandotslash]

Great to hear!

[@dark_sunset]

Best linux how-to videos available!!!

[@ArcangelZero7]

One thing I wanted to add. It happened by accident, but if you're running Windows and dual-booting, it turns out it's not a bad idea to use a separate EFI partition for Linux! OpenSUSE wants a 500MB one anyway for some reason (While Windows is 90-somethin), but this really saved my bacon once... Long-story-short, I tanked my OpenSUSE install by running out of space during an update, all sorts of trouble, couldn't even reinstall the thing. I had to just nuke every trace of it from my drives. Fortunately, I just had to wipe out its particular EFI partition and leave my Windows10 one alone, so I still had a bootable system while I figured it out! I imagine this would have been much more complicated to isolate the problem bootloader and try not to affect anything else. Maybe this isn't necessarily "The Right Way", but it doesn't hurt if you've got the space! :)

[@Meodoc]

Thanks a lot! This video actually made sense, and covered everything there is to know. It's also the only video mentioning dparted, which is really a nice tool! Finally get to trying Linux now, installed a Win11+Manjaro dual boot :)

[@thewillsfamilyaccount6486]

This is one of the best explanations of dual booting with Linux! 😊

[@R_900W]

Thank you. Exactly what i was looking for

[@beginningofchaos]

I saw this months ago, but came back just to say, thank you! this helped me a lot to understand how all the partitions work, also that having windows at first solves a lot of problems!

[@thexplorer360]

Best guide video in whole KZbin.. 😇

[@kazu4613]

Thanks so much dude, this video really helped me get my multiboot system setup

[@talltk]

Wow! This is freakin useful man. Thank you for this detailed video.

[@paulsimpson1514]

Question - I notice you did not create home partitions, is it not good practice to keep root partition separate from home content in distro's? I'm a newbie following all the advice out there.... Thanks great video

[@RedSntDK]

From my understanding, it's not strictly necessary anymore, but that used to be the preferred setup. Same with swap partition. If you just choose a partition and set it to root ( / ), the distro installer will automatically create a /home/ folder and ask about swap file size. I suppose it's advantageous to create one swap partition and then share that partition with other linux OS'es, because only one at a time will be using it..

[@Docto4St4ang3]

Best comprhensive guide , helped me alot

[@lwa.dev74]

Thanks Dorian... your tutorial is 100% the best I have found on the net....

[@trumanhw]

Great tutorial. I'd feel comfortable this after doing this ~20x & 5 instances of which having required unfcuking. Of COURSE Manjaro OMITS the LABEL field in it's partition manager Despite carefully creating labels to make later selecting it unambiguous, it's STILL based on recollection. After all, when overwriting or reformatting a partition, who needs to be careful. lol (gotta love distros).

[@MrDankid]

Thanks for this great video i'm setting a dual boot with popos and parrotos and this video comes very handy to me

[@TheRenoir]

Thank you. Best multiboot explanation yet.

[@dharanyuvi6951]

Thanks for this video sir I seriously learnt alot from this video. Especially i leart to use grub in a proper way

[@lwa.dev74]

This is a very helpful resource… very well explained much appreciated! Excellent overview👨🏽‍💻👍

[@howardneuwirth-hirsch6028]

Thank you so much! I added Mint to a Win10 system on 7 year old hardware. The Win10 crawls (likely due to only having 4GB memory) and Mint is fine.

[@Doriandotslash]

Great to hear!

[@jackdexter3286]

Thank you this helps a lot. I've tried learning about these type of stuff, but reading it bit by bit online makes it hard and confusing. This video that explains everything at once and how they're connected to each other makes it so easy. How long did it take you to learn this and how do you go about it?

[@shivpratapshukl1445]

fu*k man, I can't find your video...when I was most needed. today I just got random KZbin recommendation . Thanks alot u just cleared my all doubt. It's so short and sweet.🙏🙏

[@ndahfr]

It is really nice and usefull thank you . i love pop os and fedora alot i think i will try your way to install them together

[@Doriandotslash]

Glad I could help, thank you!

[@blokey5160]

Note also if ever a kernel is updated in the other installed OSes then you need to perform a sudo update-grub in the master bootloader OS to make those updated kernels active. Nice clear video for those looking to multiboot. For those with more than one drive I'd recommend keeping Windows on it's own drive with it's own bootloader and keep any multi Linux OSes on another drive with their bootloaders.

[@ashishhembrom3905]

He mentions it in the video for both Manjaro and ubuntu

[@ericg7490]

It works fine if you install Windows first. Then create a create boot partition for the different versions of Linux you will install. Windows just insists on being first.

[@thewillsfamilyaccount6486]

He sounds like the Windows 10, 11 channel guy?? Great video.. thanks from a new sub .

[@Doriandotslash]

Never heard that one before :)

[@deepunter4311]

Newbie to linux, so doing multiboot to explore, thanks for this vid, and subscribing coz of it.

[@smada36]

I had too many issues with Grub. My solution was to buy a load of small SSD's and install a hot swap bay in the front of the PC case. There are permanent hard drives install in the PC for anything that I want all distros to have access to. Then, like the cartridge games of old, I just slot in the distro that I want to run and hit the power button. It's probably not the way to do it, but it works.

[@ArcangelZero7]

I actually really dig this approach. In a weird way it has that "retro-future" vibe too! That chunky ka-thunk-click! into the slot when replacing drives would be neat, like the tactile feeling of VHS or ZIP-drives without the crappiness LOL. That's a pretty cool idea! I'm glad you shared it! :)

[@smada36]

@@ArcangelZero7 Thanks. And you're welcome :) It has worked quite well, but I am beginning to see some issues. As Linux starts to use UEFI there seems to be a bit of confusion on start up. It doesn't stop it from booting but it does display errors. The UEFI does fancy things like display the distros logo on the motherboard's boot screen, and I think that this is where the error is coming from. Not an issue on a legacy BIOS, but as distros move away from BIOS and towards UEFI it could be the beginning of real issues. I'm not sure and it is something that I need to research as other things like TPM might go wrong as well. But for now, even if you completely wreck a distro, just hit eject, slot in a fresh copy, and press play 🤣

[@waynejanusson7289]

Yes. Very well done. Just what I was looking for.

[@keihansha]

Best video about this topic in whole yt

[@defenderofhyrule2028]

amazing video!! thank you :)

[@Doriandotslash]

Thank you too

[@alialyaseri6789]

Thanks for this great tuto ... neat and useful notes I wish you show the same .. multi-boot with two Linux OS on Win 10

[@walter_lesaulnier]

I had lots of problems trying to dual boot- usually a Windows update wrecking GRUB. I finally got a SATA drive power switch thing and just push the button to power the drive I want to boot from.

[@serkangurkan5697]

Your tutorial videos are amazing. I decided to go back to creating soft after 16 years. soft soft is so easy to get into, but also offers

[@prasberry1915]

Perfect Video ! Excellent Work ! Thank You :)

[@Doriandotslash]

Thank you too!

[@plazmax]

Hello Dorian, wb :) on windows side easy way for me run command prompt (cmd) as admin and type: powercfg hibernate off after install linux with dual boot if u ant reach windows disk/partions try this. thank you.

[@Doriandotslash]

Ah yes that's basically doing the same thing but with the cmd prompt. Good to point out though thank you!

[@Aesir5]

Great vid, I seem to run in to problems when trying to reinstall fresh Linux and retain windows. This may help. Also spooky Ubuntu wallpaper you got there.

[@Doriandotslash]

Hope it helps you out! Cheers

[@rupeshkabir13]

Best video ever..clean and simple

[@LetsPlaysInGermany]

I had the problem, that Gparted and Ubuntu wouldn't see my hard drive. Here is a quick fix: make sure to turn off raid in your bios (default in many laptops) and use AHCI instead. Also if you are using a WIndows Laptop, disable hybernation under "choose what opening the lid does".

[@glotzenheimer]

Very good video. Thanks. You will likely ignore my other comment thinking I'm just another grammar Nazi. Nonetheless, I'll still state it anyway: there is no such word as "anyways".

[@rayerdinc2441]

WOW! Just came across your video (and channel) while searching this subject. A really informative and easy to follow video. I want to have my Windows 10 laptop boot with options for three or four versions of Linux, all OS's to have equal amount of SSD space if my 1Tb ssd drive. This has given me the info to try it but if any tips my return would be appreciated please. What make & model is your laptop, a very easy bios? 👍

[@cyberagent009]

Hi Dorian, great video. Please speak a bit louder. Thanks for the video 🙏

[@Doriandotslash]

Sorry about that

[@Crazy--Clown]

Perhaps get your ears checked

[@ajcaptainplanetsholt7856]

fedora can effect the chakras of the human body so its safer to use lower case because nobody likes being yelled at

[@lostecho9986]

@DorianDotSlash Great video. But also please note that if you have different distros with different filesystems the grub os prober feature doesn't work. Some people format and make partitions or are forced to make/format partitions during the install. And in some of those cases the distro defaults the new formatted partition to a different one e.g. btrfs, LVM, encrypted variations etc. (considering my base linux filesystem is ext4). In such cases make sure that multi-booted distros have the same filesystem type. Cheers!

[@herkatron]

Great video!

[@fal2981]

ground in just 17 minutes, amazing.

[@delcambrem]

Thanks so much, great video.

[@sandrotche7]

wow, great video! thanks!

[@RicardoOliveira-sj8nf]

THANK YOU SIR, YOU ARE FANTASTIC!!

[@ladykkk1480]

thank u so much for this great video

[@gojahija]

thanks for this video and you got subs

[@hirankaushal3899]

Nice tutorial

[@coda714]

Thanks for tutorial.

[@jurryangao713]

I've seen that you're disk is a basic disk. Is it possible to dual boot on dynamic disk and on older or legacy bios? If so, how?

[@Simiaaaa]

Thank you very very very much !!

[@lse123polis]

I have an old PC BIOS/MBR 🖥 Windows 10 Home, and wanted to follow this tutorial you created to install Ubuntu, Manjaro, Fedora latest releases as multi-boot system, is the order referring here the correct to install for BIOS/MBR System...?

[@biblicalviolence255]

Extremely helpful!

[@Doriandotslash]

Glad to hear!

[@ismailakdemir.]

Thanks so much, I"ll try nobara and zorin on win 11. Hope it works!

[@shahidrasool1414]

Thank you.

[@QuikRay]

since windows install messes up the linux bootloader, I was hoping to see how you handle that situation. I did learn alot.

[@nico-bf1kr]

What distro are better than others on specific tasks? I heard Manjaro is the best to use when one need to edit vidéos. Which other distros should we have and for what purpose?

[@ericnorwood65]

Hi Dorian, thank you for the video. I have one 250 GB SSD that has Fedora on it and I have a 2 TB HDD for storage. I am fairly new to Linux and am still trying to find the distro that I like the best. So far, Fedora is amazing, but I would like to try Parrot OS, KDE Neon, Debian, Arch, Endeavour and a few more, but I am not wanting to use a virtual machine because I feel it really lessens the experience of the OS. I was hoping to be able to use my 2TB HDD for each OS with about 100GB allocated per OS. I had to make an additional efi file and to try it out I install Ubuntu. I can now run Fedora and Ubuntu, but it is not that smooth as I have to go into the boot options within UEFI and choose which to boot from. When I turn the computer on it goes to the last OS that I was in and I cant get the boot option to show upon startup. Is there any way to add the options for Ubuntu and fedora or would I have to install the OS on the same Hard Drive?

[@Doriandotslash]

You need to update Grub for it to show the other OSes installed. Ubuntu for example, open a terminal and type "sudo update-grub" and let it finish. It will find the other options and add it to the Grub menu. Just make sure Ubuntu is selected as your default UEFI entry in your BIOS settings, and it should show all the distros installed on your system so you can pick whichever one you want to boot into. If you want to test out distros without using a virtual machine, you can always make sure you're downloading LiveISO files so you can boot off of the USB stick and test it out on hardware.

[@noctiflorous1337]

@@Doriandotslash Hey Dorian, I have a similar question! I have Pop!_OS installed on one of my SSDs and I currently use it as my main system. I use the second drive just for storage, but I want to make a partition there and install Arch. As far as I understand, I can use the existing EFI partition and configure systemd-boot in a way so it sees the other system on my second drive, but I lack the knowledge to pull this off correctly and most articles I can find focus on dual-booting with Windows. So, that's my question: how do I do that? I have used Arch before and I'm pretty familiar with the normal installation process. I just need to know what I should do differently with this set up in mind.

[@Doriandotslash]

@@noctiflorous1337 You can reuse the EFI partition, and Arch will just installed a GRUB bootloader in it. Then you can select which bootloader you want to run when your system boots up by pressing whatever key your system uses to select a boot device (F11, F12 etc). If you select Arch's GRUB bootloader as the default, then PopOS will also be in that list. Configuring systemd-boot isn't hard if you follow the wikis, but using Grub is much easier as it will automatically detect other distros when it is updated.

[@noctiflorous1337]

@@Doriandotslash thank you for replying! I had a problem with GRUB when I tried to install Arch for the first time. I just couldn't make it work on NVMe. Once I tried using systemd-boot, everything worked fine. Maybe I missed something, I'll look into it more. Otherwise, your solution sounds like exactly what I need.

[@AaronJones-kw9to]

Thank you so much for your helpful video. On another note, the timbre of your voice is very much like the voice that Stephen Hawking used but with way better enunciation. I hope you take that as a complement, because I would.

[@remline]

Fantastic video! I can see that having multiple boot loaders really can get complicated.

[@Doriandotslash]

Thanks! Yes but as long as you always use the bootloader that works with everything then you should be fine.

[@m06een00]

I would have thought it's possible to boot Manjaro from Ubuntu's bootloader. Grub boot-loader works in the same way regardless of system used. I don't know why Manjaro got stuck when you tried, and I've yet to install it. But I will in a few weeks time then see what happens.

[@Doriandotslash]

It’s a common issues. Sometimes it just doesn’t work that way.

[@m06een00]

@@Doriandotslash Well, I've finally installed Manjaro Xfce, and it boots from its own grub, AND Linux Mint's grub. I did initially have a problem booting from Mint, but that was because in running 'update-grub', it added the Manjaro entry incorrectly. So I ended up editing the 'grub.cfg' file to correct the error, and now it boots up fine from there.

[@maxim6558]

Thank you! This information is GOLD! But I have a problem with CentOS 7. Fedora and CentOS are from the same branche but by CentOS 7 there is no Advanced Custom - option. Is it posible to set the bunch of settings in Custom - option?

[@phamviethahn]

Hello. How to create more than 4 primary partitions ? Please help ! Thank you

[@phamviethahn]

I dont know why my Disk changed from GPT to MBR. I should re-setup all with GPT. So I can create more than 4 partitions.

[@HikingFeral]

Fast startup causes no issues whatsoever for me, it's on, has always been on and I can always choose my OS obviously I am not saying it's like that for everyone but worth noting you may be able to leave it on.

[@ivanpeng959]

Following your instruction, I have successfully installed Fedora on my Surface, (previously I had also installed Ubuntu). But here's the question, when I try to update-grub in Ubuntu, it doesn't work, not like yours in this video, although I can choose Fedora if I select Fedora as the first place in BIOS. But this is not the case in Ubuntu.

[@77seban]

How about if I have now Kubuntu and I want to install another distro. I can use your video but If I have /Home partition Can I use it in another distro aswell ? Thanks

[@Doriandotslash]

Short answer : Yes you can, but you MAY have issues. Long anser: I would advise against sharing /home unless both distros are using the same desktop environment that are the same version, otherwise you could have conflicts between configuration settings in your /home directory. However, if using KDE in Kubuntu, and your other distro uses another DE like Xfce or Cinnamon, then it might be fine because they won't be sharing configuration files for the desktop. Stating that though, any programs you use might have shared configurations that do things differently with different versions as well. Many people do this and have no complaints. But my advice would be to ensure you backup your /home before trying it just in case.

[@simplex6468]

Also are you using the Mac or PC version?

[@simon6028]

It’s a shame I can’t give more than 1 thumbs up

[@Doriandotslash]

Thank you!

[@utubepunk]

I'm assuming you can re-enable bitlocker when you're done. Can you encrypt each Linux install as well?

[@minhlong7948]

can i just choose install alongside Windows Boot Manager instead of manual partition?

[@jonathanedwardgoode]

I tried to add PopOS to a laptop that already had Manjaro on it and now I can no longer boot into Manjaro. Any advice? I know I haven’t erased Manjaro because I installed them in different partitions, and I was able to use my bootable Manjaro USB to mount the partition and my files were still there. I wonder if issue has to do with PopOS using systemD and Manjaro using GRUB? I tried updating grub but no luck. Also not seeing either Pop or Manjaro in my bios of my laptop (Dell Latitude e7470).

[@freeideas]

My long time dream is to be able to boot into my favorite linux distro from a USB, without touching the HD. I have several similar computers and would like to be able to just take my OS with me from one to the other. I downloaded a pirate version of windows that could do this long ago. Seems like linux would be a much better fit for that purpose, but I have tried and failed to achieve this several times.

[@Mca34e]

Is there a easy way to know how much is space is necessary for each distro? Can I change the parted size on hd later , easily?

[@elizabethjoseph2322]

HEY, I'm currently using windows 10 on bios-legacy and i wanted to dualboot it with Lubuntu. As I manual partitioned, I set 1gb for boot, 4gb as swap, 100gb as root and 100gb as home. But after clicking next it showed a warning like "A GPT partition table is the best option for all systems. This installer supports such a setup for BIOS system. To configure a GPT partition table, go back and set the partition table to GPT, next, create a 8MB unformatted partition with the bios_grub flag enabled". SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME

[@elizabethjoseph2322]

I'm really a beginner, someone please sort it out..

[@DorZ1983]

So, the next step would be to create a specific partition for /home and then every distro will use the same /home?!

[@Doriandotslash]

You could yes. But that may cause issues if the different distros have different versions of packages. That’s because there’s lots of hidden directories in your home folder that contain all your configuration files. With most file managers you can press CTRL+H to toggle seeing hidden files and directories.

[@PCHobbyist2448]

Dorian, how do I change the boot menu to a GUI? The text is so small it's difficult to see.

[@Doriandotslash]

I'd recommend you install REFInd. It's available in most distro repos, and is a graphical boot menu that shows the distro logos to choose from. If you REALLY want to keep grub, check where your distro's GRUB config file is, and add/edit it to have a line "GRUB_GFXMODE=800x600" or whatever resolution you'd prefer that makes the text large enough.

[@thenextpoetician6328]

Tried them all. Finicky bootloaders turned me off when I was distro hopping. Since settling into ArcoLinux, I only hop TWM's and there are few, so I betatest for kicks mostly.

[@Doriandotslash]

I always try a distro in a VM first. I'll use it for a while, and if I really like it, then I install it on hardware. When I install on hardware, I'll typically keep using the same bootloader and just update grub so that the new distro shows up as a selection.

[@thenextpoetician6328]

@@Doriandotslash Good system. I always have something on the go in a VM. Live and learn. :)

[@andykaufman7620]

what if you use two different hard drivea and or ssd cards