How To Dual Boot Linux Mint And Windows 10 [Beginner’s Guide]

Dual-booting Linux with Windows: What you need to know

  Windows 10 isn’t the only (kind of) free operating system you can install on your computer. Linux can run from just a USB drive without modifying your existing system, but you’ll want to install it on your PC if you plan on using it regularly.

Installing a Linux distribution alongside Windows as a "dual boot" system will give you  choice of either operating system each time you start your PC. It's the ideal way for most people to install Linux, as you can always get back to a full Windows system with a reboot.
So you have decided to switch to Linux. Good decision! But there comes many distros to choose from ,sort of like flavors of Linux. For a beginner, i would recommend using Ubuntu or Linux mint first to get a feel of how Linux works overall.
Some newer Linux based distros are also freely available like the Zorin OS or if you want you can go for some premium ones too like the Elementary OS. But for this video, we shall use Linux Mint.

Always install Linux after Windows

If you do want to dual-boot, the most important time-honored piece of advice is to install Linux on your system after Windows is already installed. So, if you have an empty hard drive, install Windows first, then Linux. If you already have Windows installed, you’re clear to install Linux.

 When you install Linux after Windows, the Linux installer knows how to deal with Windows, resize its partition, and set up a boot loader with an option allowing you to choose Windows at boot time.

Before that let me recap you a few things about installing Linux Mint. There are a few ways you can start using any Linux based operating system.

•     Use Linux inside Windows in a virtual machine: This runs a Linux OS like any other application within Windows. This is also one of the safest ways to get a feel of Linux. However, this will utilize your system resources and if you have less than 4Gb of RAM, I won’t advise using it extensively.

•     Use a live version of Linux: In this method, you put Linux on a USB or DVD and you boot from it. This is usually slow and your changes done to the Linux system are (normally) not saved. This is particularly useful if you just want to see what Linux feels like.

•     Remove Windows and Linux: If you have backed up your data and have a recovery or installation disk of Windows ready with you or if you are determined that you are not going back to Windows, you can remove Windows completely and use only Linux.

•     Install Linux alongside Windows: This method is called dual booting Linux with Windows. Here, you install Linux on a system that already has Windows. And when your system powers up, you can choose if you want to use Windows or Linux. This involves touching the disk partition and sometimes boot order. Absolute beginners often find it complicated but this is the best way to use Linux and Windows together in one system. And in this article, we’ll see how to dual boot Linux Mint with Windows 10.

This is what the Linux Bootloader (GRUB) looks like :

 

Will dual booting Linux with Windows slow down your system?

I was asked this question several times in the Linux Users Group. So, the short answer is no. Dual booting Linux and Windows won’t slow your system in any way.Once you have booted into either of Linux or Windows, it will work the same as if it is the only OS in the system. No impact on the usability of your system. Dual boot won’t slow down your system.

Install Linux Mint in dual boot with Windows:

Before we proceed to see the procedure to dual boot Linux Mint with Windows, let me give you some optional yet recommended safety instructions:

    Back up your data: You are going to touch disk partitions. Normally, it’s not a big issue but just in case if you touched wrong partition etc, you may lose data. So my advice is to back up your important files, documents, music, movies etc to an external disk or cloud, whichever suits you.
    Have a boot repair disk: If your boot gets messed up, you can try to repair it with boot repair disk. If you have an extra USB or CD, you can use that to create boot repair disk.
    Have a live or recovery disk of Windows ready: If your boot gets messed up and despite all efforts, you ended with an unbootable system, you can use the Windows disk to reinstall Windows.

Step 1: Create a live USB or disk

Go to Linux Mint website and download ISO file. This ISO file is the disk image that you can burn to a USB or DVD.

Linux Mint

Once you have downloaded the Linux Mint ISO, you need a tool to write the image to a disk. I recommend using a free tool called Rufus in Windows:

Rufus

It’s an executable exe file. Just double click on it to run the software and browse it to the ISO. Make sure that you have your USB key plugged in. Keep FAT32 as the selected partition, leave other setting as it is and press Start.

Step 2: Make a new partition for Linux Mint

 
This is where you have to be cautious. If you have multiple partitions (not the recovery ones), you can either use one of them or create a new partition from an existing partition. Your existing data will be safe if you have enough free space. Typically, you install Linux in under 10 Gb, however, if disk space if not a concern, I advise using 30-40Gb at least. This way you can have more space at your disposal for downloading and keeping various files.

In Windows 10, go to start menu and type ‘partition’. This will bring up Disk Management utility.  Now carefully select the disk in which you’ll make some free space by shrinking the volume:

In my case, I only had the C Drive with 223Gb of space on it. So I shrunk it to make 110Gb of free partition on it. 

Step 3: Boot in to live USB

Plug the live USB or disk into the computer and restart the computer. While booting the computer press F10 or F12 function key (defers from computer to computer) to go to the boot menu. Now, choose the option to boot from USB or Removable Media.

Important Note: If your computer came with Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 and you upgraded your system to Windows 10, you may have to disable secure boot. Most modern system with Windows 10 should not need this step, especially with Linux Mint or Ubuntu.

Step 4: Start the installation

It takes some time to boot from the live USB or disk. Have some patience. Once it boots in to live disk, you’ll be provided to Try Linux Mint or Install Linux Mint. Even if you choose to try it, you can find the install option on the desktop:

In next few screens, you’ll be asked to choose the language of the operating system. It will then do some checks on available space, battery and Internet connection.

Step 5: Prepare the partition

This is the most important part of the whole installation. Where to install Linux Mint? As mentioned before, I prefer separate partitions for Windows and Linux. Windows is already installed here, we’ll prepare a new partition for Linux Mint. In the Installation Type window, choose Something Else:

Step 6: Create root, swap and home

Since you already created a new partition in Windows, it’s time to install Linux Mint on it. Now, there are several ways to do it. But here, I’ll show you my favorite way and that is to have a Root, a Swap and a Home.

Create a root partition first. Choose the free space available and click on +.

 

Here, choose the size of the root (10 GB is enough but I chose to have 20 here), choose ext4 file system, and mount point as / (i.e. root):

Now, next is to create the swap partition. Now the question is what should be the swap size for Linux Mint installation?

The answer depends upon your RAM size, your needs, available disk space and whether you would use hibernation or not. You can use the below suggestion:

    RAM less than 2 GB: Swap should be double the size of RAM
    RAM between 2 to 4 GB: Swap should be RAM size + 2 GB
    RAM between 6 GB to 8 GB: Swap should be size of RAM
    RAM more than 8 GB: Swap should be half the size of RAM or less

 Don’t spend too much time thinking about swap. It is helpful for systems with less memory. For system with more than 8 GB of RAM and SSD, the less the swap, the better it is.

The next step is to create Home. Try to allocate the maximum size to Home because this is where you’ll be downloading and keeping the files.

Once you have created Root, Swap and Home partitions, click on Install Now button.

Step 7: Follow the trivial instructions

Now you will be taken through a number of screens to select options like keyboard layout, login credentials etc. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out what to do here afterward.

Once the installation is over, you will be presented with the option to keep trying live version or to restart the system.

And that would be it. On next boot, you will see the option of Linux Mint on the grub screen. And thus you can enjoy the beautiful and beginner-friendly Linux distribution. I hope you found this guide to Linux Mint dual boot with Windows helpful.

Here are a few common troubleshoot you might have to do after dual booting Linux Mint: