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.

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