Two computers work better than dual boot
 

I've dual booted, even triple-booted in the past and found out that by and large, the concept doesn't work.

You always need the OS that you are not booted into.

Or you are having issues with one and you need to use the other one. Plus Linux is designed to stay up, or you are doing something that prevents the machine from being shut down.

I stopped fighting and got a second notebook, the identical MSI GT80 Titan I already had. One will run Win10, the other RH8.

Plus if I have a hardware failure, all I have to do is swap the SSD into the working machine so it's nice to have redundancy.

I have always kept my old systems when I get a new one. Mighty handy - I often have 2 or 3 laptops going whilst watching the footy on TV.
Mind you, they are all multi-boot ... :shrug:

I've been using Linux full time since 1999, (with the occasional BSD), it's all I have on any of my machines, who needs two operating systems! :)

Linux is a kernel, not an operating system.

Yeah, I used to have Windows and Linux on the same computer. Later, found that it was less hassle to have Windows and Linux on separate machines. Then I realized I was booting up the Windows computer only to update the system, so I dumped Windows and it's been Linux-only at home ever since.

Fixed that for the nitpickers.

I used to have several Linux systems, but I've now more or less standardised on Slackware. There are other systems on my machine (an old LFS, a hard-drive version of SystemRescue, a trial of OpenBSD which I installed out of curiosity but probably won't take any further, and a version of Bodhi that I'm using to fix some documentation for the devs) but Slack is practically the only thing I use from day to day. I'll probably still build LFS when a new version comes out, just to prove to myself that I still can, but I don't feel I want another full-scale operating system with all the applications. I just don't have the energy for that any more.

Each to their own - I gave up on Slack years ago. Means didly squat to others.

I don't own or have an install of Windows, don't need it. I have 3 computers: a new MacBook Pro for anything commercial I need to run, my Debian box used as my main PC and a FreeBSD server on my HP z800. I don't dual boot to any other Linux distro because I don't see any point. If I want to experiment, I use a VM. Frankly I wish I only had my main PC and my MacBook - I really have no need for my z800 but since it's 10 years old, no one really wants it.

I give my old computers away for free, someone always takes them. :)

Where I live, there's an unspoken convention that anything you find beside someone's front gate is waiting for someone else to take it away. I've picked up a lot of equipment that way.

Businesses here don't get rid of their computers after 5 years like they once did. When the service contract expired they tossed them. You can still find a few though. In 2005 you could get 10's of them for free.

I agree with OP. Main machine for Linux, older machine in the corner with some flavor of windows just in case. I don't even have that anymore. I do have a hard drive on the shelf with Win7 on it. Guess I need to update to Win10. I really don't like it though.

Anybody with a garmin satnav :(

I no longer have a Windows machine (thanks to a nearby lightning strike), but I do have a legitimate and registered Win8 VM, just to keep my hand in and in case I need Windows for something unexpected.

I haven't used Windows for any sort of productivity (either professional or personal) in a long, long time, other than running for U. S. income tax software.

When I did have a Windows box (a 23' Lenovo graphics tablet that I received as a gift), I dual-booted it with Mint and then with Mageia just for the heck of it--it was too nice just to waste on Windows.

Before that, my only experience with dual-booting was with Slackware and Fedora, just because I wanted the experience.

^ +1 for vm.
This made me laugh out loud!
I can imagine a comic strip: 2 computers sitting side by side, one running Linux, the other Windows, and lightning striking only the Windows machine!
:D

Used to multiboot back in the old days (15-20 years ago) just b/c I thought it was "cool" and I love to tinker. I had multiboot versions of Windows, Windows and Linux, etc. In the grand scheme for what I do though it just wasn't very beneficial. I'd find I would be in one system 99% of the time and not fool with the other. BUT it was "cool" right?

Nowadays, where I am a geek and can generally obtain hardware pretty easily (family/work hand me downs), the fact that I would still mess around with older hardware, and that Linux likes old hardware I don't multiboot anything anymore. Why do that when I have 2-4 decent working computers already? I even used to hoard computers more than I already do, but I've slowed down with that.

Since usb tech has caught up with hard drives.

I see no sense in dual boot on the same drive any more.

Edit. Even down to my panasonic cf-48 < 2001> which my plop floppy boots my usb ports on ancient gear.

I prefer dual boot. This may be because I boot into Windows less than once a month, so I RARELY have need of the second OS. But I can see where it might be more convenient for some to have multiple systems.

Multiple multiboot is even better. All my 20+ 64bit PCs are multiboot with minimum of 4 operating systems, and average in excess of 12, except for the one that hasn't yet had any operating systems installed on its HD since wiping it. :)

Still using dual boot. I have wrestled with whether to have one computer or two, the second one being Windows based. So far keeping dual boot; as I seldom need Windows so there is not much of an incentive for a second computer devoted to Windows.

Unfortunately, I have had periodic problems as a consequence of having Windows. It appears that some of Microsoft’s updates have silently reactivated "sleep-mode" which subsequently caused problems when booting back into Linux. So far that has been fixed by only mounting the Windows partition in "read-only" mode. Also had a couple of instances that upgrading Windows gobbled-up the entire disk, so I had to reinstall Linux from a back-up.

I tend to virtualize rather than dual-boot at home. Main machine is an oldish Mac Pro with gobs of RAM, and I spin up a Win10 or linux VM instance when I need to, and maintain several VMs for those purposes. I keep a native Win10 game machine for games that are not available on Mac and to run my Nvidia graphics card (1080Ti) that's not supported on Mac.

I have to work on a Win10 desktop at work, but mostly use it to connect to RHEL VM instances or physical machines where I do my software development work.

Win10 only for using scanner
 

I bought a new computer less than a year ago with Win10 pre-installed. I dual-booted with Linux Mint, on receipt, and use that almost exclusively, except for scanning. I have an oldish scanner that works well, which I can't use with SANE.
I hate W10 with a passion; it's very slow, and the constant updates (which I don't need) are a complete pain. Is there a way that I can turn internet access off in W10 only, so that I don't get the updates at all? I'm expecting the answer to be no, but thought that it was worth asking.
I don't think that Microsoft os's have any advantages over Unix os's, but Microsoft, in its arrogance, really have missed a trick by not making it possible to see personal files on Linux partitions in dual-boot systems.

I think that you can install something like zonealarm with inbound/outbound monitoring. Block those windows processes that want to do that. The last time I used windows at all, that is what I did. If you set it to pop up a window and ask for each attempt, you'll never get anything done for swatting away alert windows. You'll need to set it to block stuff.

As I recall it let certain windows processes through by default, but you can dig into the config/pref and set them to off.

I would download it, install it, pull the rj45 plug out of the machine, turn wifi off, configure zonealarm, then bring the interfaces back up. Then look at the logs at how many attempts have been blocked. Windows doesn't stop, it is going to update etc. whether you like it or not, because it knows better. In fact microsoft said that.

Long live open source. Please!

A few years ago, I was only able to navigate the web via cyber cafes here in Jinotega, central Nicaragua. My favorite place allowed me to install Linux (Mepis) on one of their machines. Since I was their only customer who used Linux, that machine was 'mine', and I kept most of my development files, synchronized with my home computer, on my own home directory on the cyber cafe machine. Needless to say, I had to do this as dual-boot so their other customers could run Windows on the same machine.

Thanks, teckk, I've made a note of your advice, and will try it when I'm using the scanner again.

1. You always need the OS that you are not booted into.
   
2. Or you are having issues with one and you need to use the other one. Plus Linux is designed to stay up, or you are doing something that prevents the machine from being shut down.
   
3. I stopped fighting and got a second notebook, the identical MSI GT80 Titan I already had. One will run Win10, the other RH8.
   
4. Plus if I have a hardware failure, all I have to do is swap the SSD into the working machine so it's nice to have redundancy.

Doesn't virtualization make the first three moot?

AP

Mirrors my experience except I was booting Windows only to find that it wouldn't boot. That happened one time too many for my taste ("Please MS support rep... I need a code to re-install?") and I soon found I had a free partition to use for something more useful. :^D

I used to dualboot up to 12 Linux distros in my old BIOS + MBR PC with 3 HDD Sata II + 1 external SSD USB 2.0. ─ It was a 2 x Core2.

Now, with a new 6 cores PC, I have set 12 partitions to dualboot up to 12 Linux distros.

openSUSE Tumbleweed, Debian testing, Fedora, KDE Neon and PCLinuxOS KDE by now. ─ Planning to install also Arch, Void, Slackware, maybe a rolling Mageia, and Gentoo in the future, if I can.

It has been a nice way to learn more, with no hurry, and so I could give up Kubuntu, which has been my main distro at the beginning.

Still many things to learn.

I have planned to keep old PC working but, no, my office room has not enough space and it would not be comfortable.

Deleted old Windows 4 years ago.

Years ago when I did still use windows I setup a dual boot and then had VMWare Workstation running on Linux and could open the windows partition raw and run Windows within Linux. You had to setup twp hardware profiles in Windows, one for the native hardware and one for the vmware drivers but it seemed to mostly work.

I never need Windows for anything. Years ago I forced myself off it (gaming only) and if it doesn't run in wine, I don't play it. The only commercial OS I own is this MacBook Pro from which I am typing...I have to use windows 10 at work and just loathe it so I sure as heck don't want to use it at home. My use case is different though and there is not one single reason in my or my wife's life where we need windows.

I don't dual boot Linux or FreeBSD either. Yes, I may be odd in that I only like having one OS per computer...

No dual boot for me :)

I do both.

I have two computers beside me in my office, one at my desk running Arch Hardened, the other running a dual boot setup between Ubuntu and Win 10. Even without either option you have virtualization and containers to give you that same functionality.