1d ago

Gonna give Linux another try, any guidance is welcome!

Hey guys, after 2 years since my last attempt (and recently trying fedora on my laptop) Im ready to try again to install it on my desktop. First time I installed Nobara and it nuked my windows boots partition which caused a lot of trouble and trauma (couldnt boot into windows no matter what). Basically I want to accomplish this:

1- I want to install Fedora on a separate drive and keep my windows drive completely intact (Need it for work).
2- Preferably I would like GRUB to ask which boot option I want to use if my linux drive is set to be my boot drive and to boot straight to windows if its my windows drive set to boot.

Can someone please guide me into installing it the safest way possible?

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Identify your Windows drive and your secondary drive, install Bazzite (bazzite.gg) on a secondary drive, you'll be able to test how it runs on your hardware. If you want to keep it, then just chose whatever you want to boot to using your bios. You can set one of them to default, and you can temporarily boot to the other by pressing your motherboard's designated boot key (usually F11 or F12, look up yours).

Can someone please guide me into installing it the safest way possible?
Get the installation image you want to use. Fedora has a lot of different flavors, I think they call them "spins," so it's important to know the difference and choose the right one for you.
Install it on a VM in VirtualBox. Play around with it, figure out what all the installation steps do, don't be afraid to break the VM.
Play around with the VM in fullscreen just to get a feel for it. Don't blame the OS for performance issues, that's probably just the resource limitations of a VM.
Repeat steps 1-3 as necessary to find an OS that is comfortable enough to be your daily driver.
Use a program like Rufus to make a bootable USB out of the installation image.
Run the installer like you practiced. MAKE SURE YOU SELECT THE CORRECT HARDDRIVE, DON'T OVERWRITE YOUR WINDOWS DRIVE. Otherwise, besides MAKING EXTRA SURE ABOUT WHICH HARDDRIVE YOU INSTALL IT TO, use defaults for settings you aren't sure about.
I want to install Fedora on a separate drive and keep my windows drive completely intact (Need it for work).
I cannot stress the above warning enough: formatting the drive is the one step in installation that cannot be undone. If you format your windows drive, you cannot ever recover that data anymore.
Since it's work related hardware, I have 2 pieces of advice; you should follow one or the other:
Don't. Don't fuck around with work hardware. It should be a separate PC that you literally only ever use to get work done. Whether it's owned by a company or you're self-employeed, mixing your hobby/leisure/gaming/tinker/daily driver with your work computer is a baaaaaad idea. You will get something all fuzzed up, you will try to fix it by reinstalling the OS or otherwise doing disk formatting/partitioning, and you will end up corrupting windows.
Okay, so you decided not to heed my warning because you like gaming (or whatever) too much and can't afford a separate desktop/tower rn. i get it, I did the same once and lived to tell the tale (i do have separate machines now, fwiw). In that case, before you install fedora, simply disconnect the Windows drive. Yank it right out and don't reinstall it until you've got linux up and running just how you like it. Not just after the installation, but after the configuration. Then there's no chance you accidentally format/corrupt your drive.
Preferably I would like GRUB to ask which boot option I want to use if my linux drive is set to be my boot drive and to boot straight to windows if its my windows drive set to boot.
If the installer gives you the option, simply install Grub on the same drive as Linux. When you select the linux drive in your BIOS' boot options, it will run grub, which will give you options, including booting into windows if you want. When you select the windows drive in your BIOS' boot options, it will use the windows bootloader (which boots straight into windows, unless you have multiple windows installations).

I would use two different disks, the one that you have already for windows and a second one for Linux. When you're ready to install Linux Unplug the windows disk, so that you can't screw it up ( been there, did that 😭) then when you need to use either the Linux or Windows Just choose the start up disk in bios at booting, usually F11, a tiny bit longer than dual booting, but it will save you a lot of hassle. Dual booting is rather dangerous as windows has the annoying habit of wiping Linux grub setups when updating, and Linux has the annoying habit of wiping everything, two different disks, much easier.
- Windows only wipes Linux grub if the grub boot efi stuff gets installed into the windows disk EFI partition. Its best to specify a new EFI partition on the new disk so grub is isolated from windows. The distro OS probe should pickup an alternate OS on other disk and add a chainloader entry to Linux grub. Windows never knows there is another EFI partition if you do it this way.

If you mean different physical drives, I would suggest detatching the drive with the already installed system when installing the second one.
Also, Linux installers may behave differently from one another, so I would suggest testing on another machine if possible, or at least backing up what you cannot afford to lose in the current machine, shrinking the Windows partition with its native partition manager instead, and picking a system whose installer can spot the correct partitions, maybe e.g. Mint with its option to be installed alongside an already installed system, or Endeavour which, from what I remember, can detect empty partitions.
Also if during install, grub is not set up to have both Linux and Windows as start options, there is a grub manager on Linux too, so that can be salvaged.
And lastly, a word of warning, and reiterating a past point, testing something as big as a dual boot in a computer with sensitive and already existing data is playing with fire.
- but if I can remove my windows drive then it would be 100% safe right? Its an NVME drive and I think I can disable it in my BIOS, removing it would be a massive pain
  
  Dunno what sort of setup you have, but what I would do, considering my setup and by being a tad on the neurotic side, is to unscrew and detatch any drives but the one to be flashed. This, I think, is the only way to be absolutely sure nothing goes in the wrong place.

For new users the main question is not what operating system but what window manager as that is what shapes day to day user interaction. KDE plasma is a solid choice.
Installing it on a separate drive should be no problem. Just select the correct drive during install.
I use F10 to get to the boot menu on drive and select the drive it needs to boot from there. I have used it once in the last year and although it required many updates its still working.

For anyone new to the Linux world, I can't recommend Learn Linux TV enough. He has a video walking through this exact process, here's an Invidious and YouTube link for it.
As far as dual booting goes, issues can arise after updates. I recall this happening a few months back due to a Windows update. So just be aware of this possibly happening down the road. I need Windows for work at times too, but I strictly use a VM. I've hated Microsoft since Windows 8, their amount of user tracking is bonkers and a big part of why I just use a VM. This is just food for thought though.

Fedora will default to your empty drive, but just in case, but into the liveUSB, and identify your drive assignments and partitions so you are POSITIVE you're installing to the right drive. The installer will ask you multiple times where you want to install, so it shouldn't be a problem.
Grub will default to asking you what you want to boot. You can change the defaults after install if you'd like.
- All my drives have different sizes so the chance is super low. My worries is because I picked the correct drive in nobara and it still nuked my windows boot partition (the rest of my windows drive was fine but couldnt boot into it), I was wondering if I need to somehow disable my windows drive to make sure nothing happens to it, but then Im worried GRUB wont see it
  
  You wont get windows in Grub, but since you're using separate drives, you can boot each one by just setting the boot drive in BIOS.
  You can also look up how to add windows later, once you have fedora working and re-enable the drive with windows.
  
  I'd have to see the Nonara install to know, but I don't see how that would happen then or now. I've installed thousands of machines and never had it accidentally do anything like "miss" the correct target drive.
  Either way, you shouldn't have an issue now.

Did you manually partition? It sounds like when you installed Nobara the /boot/efi partition got formatted, a similar thing happened to me recently (just wasnt paying attention), I used a Windows install USB to get a command prompt and restore the EFI entry.

on the second part if you have an efi motherboard I can recommend the refind boot manager which is eseayer to set up. and you can dual boot from multiple disks. you have to install the package after setting up your fedora install
here is the official dokumentation from fedora https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Refind

Fedora is a solid choice. I recommend Kinoite because it's familiar to Windows users and impossible to break.

As a n00b I'd go Mint, unless you have hardware concerns in which case Fedora is the only option these days (Ubuntu is bad now). I have used Linux since 1996 and would not dualboot in 2025. Microsoft will fuck your shit. Just roll with two boxes.
- But boxes famously don't roll!
- If you have 2 separate drives each with their own boot loader and you tell your bios to boot from the grub bootloader and grub has successfully detected another OS like windows everything will be fine.
  The trouble with dual booting comes from splitting a drive into partitions with different OS's on them sharing the same boot partition. Eventually windows will nuke grub and you will loose the ability to boot linux till you use a live USB to repair through chroot and fixing/installing grub manually or using a grub-repair live USB. Usually only gets complicated if you have luks set up.
  I don't advise dual booting on a single drive. I intentionally buy gaming laptops with dual drive setups and keep the windows drive untouched till the warranty is out. Just in case i have to send it in for repair. Been doing this since 2004 without ever having any bootloader issues that I didn't cause myself.

I advice installing fedora gnome and enjoying

rawdog arch

The best advice I can give you is to switch to Linux is don't right away. Switch the applications you use to open source or Linux compatible alternatives that also run on windows. Then after you get used to those on windows then make the switch.
I would also recommend not dual booting at first since it's too easy to jump ship at the slightest issue vs sticking with it to figure out the issue just like you would with a problem on windows. It's a real thing I have experienced it in reverse as a long time Linux user that tried Windows 11 i kept jumping back to Linux every time I ran into issues that caused frustration.

38 comments