Yess, let the hate flow through you! ⚡
So, excusing my ignorance as a fairly recent Linux convert, what does this mean for my dual boot system?
I haven’t booted windows for weeks and am pretty sure there have been no updates since it was freshly reinstalled (maybe 6 months ago) as a dual boot with Debian.
Is this only a problem if I allow Windows to update?
Are Microsoft likely to fix the issue in a subsequent release?
FWIW, I’m dual-booting windows and mint atm. Separate drives, but just one EFI partition, and this update hasn’t borked things for me.
Yes, you don’t have to worry as long as you don’t boot up windows and let it install the update.
This is not the first time they break dual boots by touching the partitions, but this is the first time they deliberately break it (that I know of). I always had windows on its own drive because of that. If you don’t use windows a lot then I would suggest to do the same. You have to change to windows through bios but it isn’t that much more work.
Thanks for the reply, and good to know!
I think I’ll blow away the windows install on this machine completely.
I still have another pc for some audio tools that don’t run under Linux, but this machine is my daily driver now and I couldn’t be happier.
And just in case when installing windows on its own drive, only have the windows drive mounted so it doesn’t write to the linux drive.
Good intention, shit execution.
If Microsoft didn’t have a decades-long record of pulling shit like this, they might get the benefit of the doubt.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
I hate this phrase.
A lot of the time, people (and especially monopolistic, tax-dodging, $3.2 trillion multinationals with a long history of anti-competitive behaviour) really are just cunts.
Time and time again, we see big companies doing anything they can to destroy competition, mislead customers, etc.
Never attribute to stupidity what can be adequately explained by malice.
In business and politics “malice” and “stupidity/incompetence” are one and the same.
It’s not like MS coined EEE or anything…
stupidity is a once-off
malice is a pattern
and even if it’s not malicious, a pattern of stupid action needs to be stopped just as much as malicious action
stupidity is a once-off
🎶 …this iiiiis my one an only wiiiiiiish! 🎶
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Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Emphasis mine. Incompetence on Microsoft’s part is not an adequate explanation for this latest action matching a pattern of other actions designed to antagonize FOSS users.
Stupidity doesn’t adequately explain the number of times they have done this. I’m surprised it’s even a headline anymore.
Microsoft has been consistently “stupid” for a very long time about this one particular thing.
Wow, they must be really stupid over at Microsoft!
Does having Linux and Windows on seperate drives mitigate this issue somewhat?
Wanting to start dual booting and moving to windows. Wondering if that helps at all.
Edit: I meant moving to Linux… >.>I keep Linux and windows on separate disks, grub or windows boot manager don’t know about each other. I have the Linux disk as the primary boot, if I need to boot into windows i use the bios boot selection screen. It’s a bit of a pain at times(have to mash F12 to get the bios boot menu) bit it’s less of a headache than trying to fix grub
I took this approach as well but I let Grub add Windows as a boot option. No mashing keys at post and Windows doesn’t get to touch Grub or Debian.
I have considered adding windows to grub, but these days I hardly boot into windows so there is probably not much point.
N I C E !
Ah, I see, there really is a way 😁👌🏻
Thanks for your input!
If you can, put Windows in a VM instead.
Do you think I can program on a Windows VM? Do you work with it? I still use Windows because I need my programs to work on Windows (had my programs built on Linux fail on Windows Machines before). Do you have experience on this?
That wouldn’t be about the VM but the OS. If the software is built to target linux without care for portability then it’ll fail on windows - you’d have to compile it targetting windows, either using the Visual Studio compiler or MinGW’s gcc, be it native for windows under MSYS2 or using a cross-compiler variant.
I’d only use windows for gaming really, wouldn’t running it in a VM be less optimal in that vase? In terms of performance of windows and playing fames within the VM.
Really depends on the virtualization technology, hardware, configuration and game. Not a gamer myself.
Gaming on linux has come a long way in recent years though, in no small part thanks to Steam.
Not on my experience. But separate machines would work, if Microsoft never releases a “Wi-Fi network security patch for compatibility with all machines”.
I put windows in the shame box (VM).
I recently discovered that Rufus has an option to set up a Windows ISO as “Windows on the go” so I dug out an old 500Gb SSD that had a USB adapter with it and installed Windows on that. So now instead of dual booting I can just hit F12 and boot from USB on the rare occasions when I need to run something in Windows.
It’s also quite satisfying to be able to physically remove Windows and shove it into a drawer when it goes full Windows too lol.
God, I’d have a back up in case I went full office space.
I pretty much did just go full office space on it lol. Here’s a fun thing I just learned:
Windows 11 apparently defaults to a tiny fraction of space for system restore points, and if it runs out of space it just deletes the old ones without asking or telling you. Because it defaults to a tiny amount of space, it apparently only ever keeps one system restore point on hand.
This means I made a manual one on a clean install when I’d got my settings sorted, so I can hop back to that when Windows inevitably fucks up. But because it’s Windows, what it did was apply a big update, fuck it up, then save that fuck up as the only restore point.
I restored it anyway just to see what would happen, and that broke even more stuff. Back in the drawer!
This has been my solution for a long time.
This again?
They don’t want you to have dual boot. They want you to choose.
I’m going to choose a VM.
I’d almost bet money that in a year or two they’ll make it so that the latest version of windows cannot be installed in virtual machines
That would break 90+% of installations then. And all of Azure.
Yes and
That’s when they “graciously” offer to whitelist “approved” devices to boot windows VM from.
Then anyone running a Windows VM would just switch to a Server edition, which is almost exclusively run via a VM.
I have a morbid curiosity to see that happen.
Glad I chose linux then.
.
Is there any issue with having windows on one drive and Linux on the other and toggling in the bios at boot? Do I introduce any problems by keeping my rarely used windows installation on a separate disk like this?
I’m not sure, but clearly something happens on the background, as my Debian drive broke after I changed it back and forth for the Windows drive. Grub fell back to rescue mode. After following some instructions and trying to boot from grub command line, Debian wouldn’t boot after it recognized the mouse. That’s what I know. Even in different drives, something happens on the PC when you go back and forth with Windows and Linux.
Here’s how to delete the SBAT policy that the Windows Update applies.
I should have been more clear,
Assuming dev/sda is Linux and dev/sdb is Windows, I have grub on sda and Windows bootloader on sdb. I use a hotkey at boot to tell the bios which drive to boot from.
Theoretically windows thinks it’s the only OS unless it’s scoping out that second hard disk.
It updates Secure Boot in the BIOS, so you could completely remove Windows but the Secure Boot update would still be in the BIOS and affect the boot loader.
Microsoft! You missed your last chance to stay on my computers with your os. Take care, so long and thanks for all the cons.
If you need to dual boot, be sure to use separate EFI partitions for windows and Linux, separate drives if possible. Windows has done this far too many times.
Just remove Windows. One problem less on the list.
and unplug your linux drive when booting windows, just in case
+1. I do this
“wasn’t supposed to”
Are you quoting CroudStrike?
I’m quoting OP’s summary (or quote). I’m implying that Microsoft is hostile to Linux installations generally.
This is a regular occurrence and honestly we need to stop recommending dual boot. Use separate drives if you need to, but sharing the same drive is destined to brick something
But having 2 drives does not solve the boot loading issue, I mean, even if you have two drives, you still have only one bootloader, not?
You can have a own EFI partition per Drive (and on it whatever bootloader you want). You then need to use the UEFI boot menu if you want e.g. boot the Windows one. If you have 2 different OS on different drives they should never interfere with each other.
Well, i mean you could of course use the Linux Bootmanager to then forward to the Windows boot manager on the other disk. but i never experimented with that.
I just learned that you can do this setup even on one drive alone (having two bootloader on one drive in two partition and choosing in UEFI/Legacy BIOS)
even if you have two drives, you still have only one bootloader, not?
The idea is to have completely separate boot and OS drives. You select which one you want to boot through the BIOS boot selection (ie. pressing F10 or F11 at the BIOS screen).
This functionally makes each OS “unaware” of the other one.
Oh you sweet sweet summer boy…
We’re talking Microsoft here, they’ll make sure they’re aware and they’ll make sure to f you over because Microsoft
While I generally agree with that, that’s not what seems to be happening here. What seems to be happening is that anyone who boots Windows via grub is getting grub itself overwritten.
When you install Linux, boot loaders like grub generally are smart and try to be helpful by scanning all available OSes and provide a boot menu entry for those. This is generally to help new users who install a dual-boot system and help them not think that “Linux erased Windows” when they see the new grub boot loader.
When you boot Windows from grub, Windows treats the drive with grub (where it booted from) as the boot drive. But if you tell your BIOS to boot the Windows drive, then grub won’t be invoked and Windows will boot seeing it’s own drive as the boot drive.
This is mostly an assumption as this hasn’t happened to me and details are still a bit scarce.
I did that and a Windows update nuked Linux from the BIOS boot loader a few weeks ago.
The only safe option is to have completely separate machines. Thankfully with the rise of ridiculously powerful minipcs that’s easier than ever.
Unfortunately it really doesn’t. And it’s actually Linux that’s the bigger problem: whenever it decides to updates GRUB it looks for OSes on all of your drives to make grub entries for them. It also doesn’t necessarily modify the version of grub on the booted drive.
Yes I’m sure there’s a way to manually configure everything perfectly but my goal is a setup where I don’t have to constantly manually fix things.
If you install each OS with it’s own drive as the boot device, then you won’t see this issue.
Unless you boot Windows via the grub boot menu. If you do that then Windows will see that drive as the boot device.
If you select the OS by using the BIOS boot selection then you won’t see this issue.
I was bitten by Windows doing exactly this almost 15 years ago. Since that day if I ever had a need for dual-boot (even if running different distros) each OS will get it’s own dedicated drive, and I select what I want to boot through the BBS (BIOS Boot Selection). It’s usually invoked with F10 or F11 (but could be a different key combo.
My install does not seem to do this. I removed the windows drive when installing Linux on a new drive. Put both drives in and select which one to boot in the bios. Its been that way for about a year and, so far, grub updates have never noticed the windows install nor added to grub.
That’s with bazzite, can’t speak for any other distro as that is the only dual-boot machine I own. Bazzite does mention they do not recommend traditional dual boot with the boot loader and recommend the bios method so maybe they have something changed to avoid that?
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EFI can also live in firmware memory.
You can pull the linux drive, boot from the windows drive, and if one of the firmware updates was for efi, windows will trash the entry for your Linux disk.
This has happened for me many times, I had to use a grub rescue disk to rebuild the efi table.
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I’m not exactly sure what you’re suggesting. Isn’t that more or less what I just said?
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I don’t think dual boot has ever been a good solution (unless you also run one or both of the OS’s under the other in a VM).
Like, if you are unsure about linux, trying it out, learning, whatever, you can just boot a live"cd", or maybe install it on an external (flash) drive.
If you are kinda sure you want to switch, just nuke Windows; it’s easier to switch that way than to have everything on two systems, having to switch.
That is until you want to switch and use mostly linux, but you have friends who want to play one of those few games that only works on windows
The second windows isnt the only option for “all games without any effort”, it will be dead.
Well i believe it already is for the majority of games, though I don’t game anymore so I don’t know, proton wasnt 100% a year or two back
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I’ve been on Steam+Proton for more than 3 years now. So many many games are now supported. It is usually the DRM kernel anti-cheats that are Windoxez only tend to be the broken ones. I dont buy or care about games that run anti-cheat in Windoze kernel.
I literally got this error using a bootable SSD with Ubuntu Mate on it. Separate drives aren’t immune to the issue.
I think I’ve managed to avoid this by making the Linux drive my boot drive and by leaving the Windows drive untouched. (i.e. grub bootloader on the Linux drive, with option to boot to Windows as the second choice)
I’ve got the same setup 😎
This isn’t true if you have a bootloader on each drive, which, I think, is what the we’re talking about.
I dual booted a few times back in the days of winxp and win7. Never had a good experience somehow windows or a grub update always messed up things. Haven’t ran windows in years but when I have to it goes on a separate drive now.
Remove your Microsoft installation, done.
Yes but…
But what? This is Microsoft, they fucked it up so many times that it’s either incompetence or sabotage, and knowing Microsoft, it’s probably both.
This is the same company that invented millions to sabotage Linux through the legal system (hello sco), and the same company that in purpose left gaping security holes open as to not lose any money, causing China to hack the US government through said holes.
Then we decide that just that money isn’t enough so we’ll spy on you at every step of the way, we will force feed you ads, and we’ll use you to train our shitty AI
Frack Microsoft, frack any and all of their software.
