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.
Since they’re going to be on separate drives there should be no problems. Literally the only time you have to worry about Windows eating your bootloader is when they’re on the same drive.
And even if both are on the same drive, in like 5 years, it happened like once to me on the machine I daily drive
I’ve had GRUB nuked from installing a BIOS update. Kinda sucks that it happens at all, but it’s bound to happen at some point. It’s pretty rare though.
Just keep a live disk on hand somewhere and use it to setup your bootloader again when needed. It’s only a few bash commands, generally.
Windows update managed to overwrite multiple non windows drives on my dual boot a few months ago. I don’t know how likely it is but microslop defiantly encourages backups
This ^ I have a USB SSD for my Steam Deck that boots Windows 11, no issues.