Installing Slackware after a hiatus, and dual-booting Windows 10
 

Hi all,

The computer I had running Slackware died a while ago. I shifted everything over to a laptop running Windows 10 and Ubuntu for a few years.

I now have an older Desktop up and running again, which a new, blank hard drive. I plan to put Slackware 14.2 on it, but my kids need Windows for some things. I haven't installed Slackware since Windows 10 came out. What's the recommended procedure?

Should I install Slackware first and then Windows 10?

Or should I go the other way around?

Has anyone had luck running Windows 10 in a persistent KVM/QEMU VM?

Must I use ELILO?

Even more daunting, must I use GRUB2? I haven't installed and configured GRUB . . . ever. (Ubuntu handles the configuration automatically).

I've been running and dual booting Slackware since version 11. I'm not new to this, but the whole UEFI situation has me flummoxed. Any advice is welcome.

As this is a desktop, use two disks.

* Install Slackware to the 2nd disk.
* Configure the BIOS to boot from the 2nd disk.
* Edit the boot loader to chainload the boot to Windows on the 1st disk.

This way the Win10 disk is never touched and the MS bullies never complain.

GRUB is just fine. I have been using GRUB for many years. :)

Use slackware 64bit, disable secure boot, install windows first.
If efi partition already exist and formatted fat32 the slackware installer will add it during the target partition and offer to skip lilo and install elilo during configuration. If you want to use grub you will have to run grub-install and grub-mkconfig after installing slackware

Thanks for the responses!

Disable secure boot in the BIOS?

That seems simple enough.

Quick follow-up question: in the past, I've put Windows on one partition, and then had root, boot, home, and / on separate partitions. Should Windows go on the first partition?

Most efi systems have something called secure boot that has to be disabled in the bios. Also there something called fastboot in windows 10 that has to be disabled under advance in power settings. I think the first partition will be the efi partition. Not sure if windows has to go on the second partition or not.

Traditionally yes, although recent versions of Windows are tolerant of not having that spot.

Windows is known for overwriting boot loaders during updates. Hence the advice to use two disks. Windows then can update its own boot loader on its own disk with impunity and will have no knowledge of the BIOS boot order change. If the 2nd disk poops, forcing the user back to Windows, everything is configured exactly as Windows expects.

Regarding the kids, you could be hard-core like Slackwarefanboy.... :D

If Windows is installed on the first hard drive and second is meant for Slackware, IIRC Slackware 14.2 won't let you install elilo to the EFI partition on the second hard drive, it will default to the one on the first hard drive, where Windows boots from. Installing elilo there is still fine, Slackware will boot from the second drive. I was told here on forum that it is possible to explicitly select the target drive for installing elilo in -current.

On topic: elilo is fine as long as it just works for your setup. For painless dual booting refind is great.

Windows does not need to be on the first partition but it does need to have boot files on one of the primary partitions. If you are using UEFI/GPT, all the partitions are primary. Windows 10 has a Custom install option so that if you were to create an ntfs formatted partition in advance, you should be able to select that during the windows install. I'd agree with above posts to install windows first, usually less complications. THe fastboot/hibernation settings would need to be off or the installer will not mount the ntfs partition(s).

Thanks, everyone, for the kind replies. I ended up chickening out a little bit and installing Slackware to a Virtualbox VM. I'm getting back into the swing of things.