Dual boot Windows 11 and Slackware
 

Hi all

My laptop is actually dual booting Windows 10 and Slackware current.

I am told that I can install Windows 11 since my laptop has TMP 2 and Secure Boot.

But I was obliged to disable Secure boot to install Slackware with Windows 10 and I am afraid that Windows 11 forces the Secure Boot and block the access to Slackware ?

Any experience of dual boot Windows 11 and Slackware ?

Yes, there's a thread regarding running Slackware with SecureBoot enabled, and even a guy who claim that he managed it:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post6293118

While you will read that he struggled 3 days to configure the Grub for SecureBoot, let's see the bright side:

at last you can disable the SecureBoot (temporary), but there are computers who have no way to disable it. I own one, for example. ;)

After more than 14 years with (Slackware 11-14.2 current) I can confidently say that nothing is impossible and there are no problems that cannot be solved.

Just curious. Do you actually need Windows as in a job requires it or just used to it?

I know that's hard to believe, but I heard that actually some people do prefer to play Windows games on Windows, not Wine.

Possible that's simple rumors.

Over the last few years I have become more of a fan of Windows. I like and use Linux, BSD, and Windows. I haven't had my Nerd membership revoked....yet. :)

If someone has philosophical or limited resources reasons for not wanting to run Windows I understand that. But financially windows 10 can be easily found under $25 now. So given that reason its just easier to dual boot to windows for games or for those few programs that just are too much of a PIA to get running in wine. I hope Slackware down the road will solve the Secure Boot issue with its own key that won't require any work by the end user, but if I have do the shim method mentioned in other posts myself then I will do it.

Understood and there are still a few games that run better or at all in Windows... no problem there but AFAIK there's no advantage to "upgrading" from Win10. That's why I asked.

I remember when Windows was not a gaming platform at all, except for a truly horrific game called Hover :). Serious gaming back in the day was done under DOS. Funny how things change...

True but gaming on DOS was often a royal PITA especially audio configuration. I started playing Quake on DOS and it got much better by Win98 but when ioquake3 native Linux was released WHOA! what an upgrade! I still play it. It was fast in DOS but wioth modern hardware the physics has only quantum leaped. Astounding really.

Not a rumor. I dual-boot Slackware and MS Windows (10) on my main machine.

My Windows is "crippled", though... no Networking enabled. I ONLY use it for gaming. I run Nvidia drivers for Windows, but Nouveau on Slackware.

This has been my setup for about 20 years now.

Perhaps SteamDeck will cause you to change your traitorous archaic ways ;) ;)

Oh, I doubt it.

I also keep that Windows on my system because I'm Family/Friend IT Guy, so I have to stay up-to-date with Windows a bit, anyway. Fortunately, I've converted most of my family and friends to Linux. There are still a few holdouts, though. ;)

I currently have Win 10 Home in dual boot with Slackware-current. There are g̶a̶m̶e̶s̶ important applications which I prefer to run on Windows.

Hello again vtel57. I don't know what type games you play or if this will make a difference but I ran a comparison on the same multiboot box that you might find interesting. I'd have liked to have run an actual game's benchmark like say "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" but it and all the games I have that have built-in benchmarks are native Linux versions on Steam. I run "Witcher 3", "WoW" and "Half Life Update" in WINE or Proton but neither have built-in benchmark utilities. So instead I ran the brutal Unigine Superposition benchmark, each in it's respective native version in Win10 and Slackware 15.0-RC1. To keep it simple I chose the default 1080P Medium difficulty.

TLDR Linux scored 12521 @ avg FPS of 93.65 and Win10 scored 12256 @ avg FPS 91.67... not a huge difference but Linux is clearly the winner and this doesn't involve the substantially superior TCP/IP stack or memory management in Linux, important to smoothness and latency for online gaming (especially any multiplayer games) and multimedia apps.

All I'm saying is you might want to try modern Linux for gaming. Very few Windows games don't run at all on Linux these days and those that do run as well or even substantially better in Linux. Just because you have Windows installed is no compulsory penalty on gaming... unless you so choose so for some reason. Linux has improved a lot in 20 years. Why reboot to no advantage?