Not really sure how dualbooting or vms work at their core. I’m kind of over windows and want to swap, always liked the customizability aspect and have been using Linux more and more for self hosting purposes. Was wondering if I setup linux on my external ssd using a vm if I could change it from vm to a dualboot drive after I’m done setting it up. That way I could setitup and swap to it while keepign my original ssd with my windows install,. and not have to deal with dualbooting and going back and forth while setting up?

Can I make a vm of my current windows machine backup and run that in a linux setup?

  • Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    7·
    5 days ago

    This is good advice imo. Some further comments:

    • Its easier to make a vm out of a bare metal or “real” install. It’s much harder to go the other way.
    • you seem to have some fear about installing or reinstalling OSs. It’s much easier than redeploying vms. I’d banish those thoughts and jump in. Again the above advice is solid because you can mess up or change your mind, and you can always revert. Cloning a drive and redeploying that image to the original drive is simple.
    • dual booting gets a lot of flak. Most of that comes from windows not playing nice with boot partitions when windows is installed on the same drive. Another source of issues is secure boot. If you have two internal drives, installing an os on each one works great. I like turning secure boot off and simply pressing F8 upon boot up if I want to switch. (But you totally can get it working with secure boot and adding other OSs to grub.
    • sunstoned@lemmus.orgEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      +1 for both comments above.

      Back up your current disk! If you do it properly you can always restore your current operating system if this experiment doesn’t pan out.

      Fedora KDE is an excellent starter choice. The DE will feel relatively familiar coming from Windows and Fedora is very much a batteries included distro. Red Hat guides are excellent and very useful in that family.