Nope, all I know is it jacked EFI up so bad that not even the Windows recovery tool could fix it. I don't know what it was doing, but it was wrong. It detected EFI correctly, used the EFI partition, etc., but after the installation completed the machine was hosed and wouldn't boot into any OS. It did it three times because I tried to install OpenSUSE three times, and it killed the machine every one of them. On the fourth round I switched to trying Mint, and it went fine on the first try.

I'm not trying to say OpenSUSE is bad or the installer is junk or anything of the sort, it's entirely likely there was an option that I selected wrong that was causing the problem. That's why I tried it 3 times, making slight changes on each one, to try to root out the cause before I gave up. My point was simply that even for experienced users, OS installations can go very wrong from time to time, and if you don't have a backup of what's currently on your machine, it's entirely possible to lose everything.

Okay so just make sure there is Windows recovery disk that in event of a problem one can format and reinstall Windows.

How to dual boot Linux with Windows.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2955...d-to-know.html

Sure, as long as you don't actually want to keep anything you have stored/configured on the Windows side.

As I've said, "screw 'dual booting!'"

Just use a virtual machine, on an un-molested host, and be done. VirtualBox is absolutely free, runs on everything, and is supported by one of the largest software companies in the world. Virtualization technology is very advanced and it uses hardware support that is built-in to the microprocessor. Most web sites and so-forth run on virtual, not real, machines.

What's your overall point here? Are you trying to decide on a direction to take? Or is this all merely an open academic question?