> I've been daily driving Linux since March 2020 however recently purchased a Valve Index and decided to pop Win 10 on a completely empty secondary M.2. The setup kept failing because it just could not handle the fact that the primary M.2 had a Linux boot loader on it. It just refused to install.
That's better than what has happened to me with prior versions of Windows: the Windows installer just deleted the Linux bootloader, even though it was on a completely different drive.
Nowadays I always disconnect all other drives when installing Windows. But it's a pain.
Even doing it the opposite way around still doesn't work (installing Windows first, and then replacing the Windows bootloader). Every time there is a Windows update that is "major" enough, it will wipe the existing Linux bootloader.
I lived like that for about a year, but eventually just gave up and stuck to Windows. I like Linux a lot, but I've found that I save more time using Windows then trying to get Linux to work on whatever piece of hardware I have (driver issues, bugs, some remaining software that still doesn't work with Linux).
You can remove most of the crap via a debloater, but Windows 11 is just overall worse than Windows 10. The UI updates just took all the negatives of using a Mac, but without any the parts that make it actually useful. I miss being able to see the title of windows in the taskbar...
My favorite pet theory about Microsoft is that no one that works there actually uses any of their products and are just on Macs lol
> Every time there is a Windows update that is "major" enough, it will wipe the existing Linux bootloader.
I think that has not been true for a long time. At least if you are using UEFI. Windows respects UEFI enough to just change own stuff in the EFI partition. Windows will change the default boot entry to itself at installation time, but so every Linux distro do. Notice that nowadays you can install Windows *after* Linux and you just need to change the default OS back to Linux if you want so.
I'm a Linux user myself, but this is one of those myths that should end. I have had a Windows partition for almost three years that I only use to update Windows (all Windows 10 versions up until now and Windows 11 in the last update). Not once the update has affected my boot options.
>My favorite pet theory about Microsoft is that no one that works there actually uses any of their products and are just on Macs lol
There have been multiple comments on HN from Microsofters (Microsoftarians?) about how the Windows UI/Design team uses Macs exclusively, which explains a lot. I believe the Visual Studio team is still dogfooding, but can't believe that about anyone else, given how actively user hostile the OS has been.
>I miss being able to see the title of windows in the taskbar...
To be fair, that dumbass trend started with Windows 7.
I just install StartAllBack these days to be done with it (and it fixes the problems that 10's Start Menu has- that search will probably never work again). Yeah, you have to pay for that extension, but you also have to pay if you want window-snapping on macOS- thus they stopped being better, but they haven't really become worse.
Sadly it seems that the issues they're talking about persist even with each OS getting its own drive. I know I've had issues with that. It seems insane that Windows should overreach onto drives its not even installed on, but here we are.
That's better than what has happened to me with prior versions of Windows: the Windows installer just deleted the Linux bootloader, even though it was on a completely different drive.
Nowadays I always disconnect all other drives when installing Windows. But it's a pain.