Got an old laptop from a friend I’d like to rejuvenate, the plan is to set up a light distro so it wouldn’t be as slow as it is right now with windows 10.

Now, I’m aware windows updates can fuck up a dual boot system, so i have a few questions about how to minimize the threat of that happening.

What i think of doing is running a few scans to check the disk, then setting up Linux Mint, because it is beginner friendly, and (relatively) light weight.

What I’d need help with is trusted guides and also tips for setting up dual booting, I’m sure I’ll need to do disk partitioning and I’ve done that before but I’d still want to make sure I’m doing it correctly.

Any help would be welcome.

  • @neanderthal
    3•13 days ago

    You could leave the Windows installation and not dual boot. Linux can read NTFS volumes. You will probably have to install ntfsprogs or whatever it’s called.

    • @[email protected]OP
      4•13 days ago

      If i understand correctly, i could leave the windows install as is, but disable it from appearing during boot, and install a program to read the files from the windows partition?

      If so that’s actually a perfect solution :)

      • @neanderthal
        2•13 days ago

        Yes.

        To do this, open a terminal, and do this:

        sudo apt search ntfs

        It will be called something like ntfs-progs or ntfs-fuse or both.

        Then:

        sudo apt install PKG1 PKG2

        Alternatively, the synaptic package tool has a nice GUI

        • @[email protected]OP
          2•12 days ago

          I’m finally back, apparently linux mint comes with ntfs handling out of the box, just opened the file explorer (nemo), and opened a picture successfully.

          Only step left is disabling booting through windows.

      • @neanderthal
        1•13 days ago

        Oh, you mentioned you don’t want to keep a backup of the entire drive. That is fine, but absolutely back it up before starting the install.

        I would just boot a live Linux image and dd the entire device file onto some sort of storage. That way you can get a bit for bit copy of the drive that you can make it how it was before you touched it. When all is well, then you can ditch the backup. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep if the stuff is important. Storage devices do fail.

      • @[email protected]
        1•13 days ago

        AFAIK on most distros and desktop environments the default file manager can read NTFS partitions without any further setup needed.