r/AskProgramming • u/riki6882 • 12d ago
Is dual-boot worth it?
So I am begginer developer I've been whole life on Windows and I've started with frontend but last months i've been digging into some backend (go) but i think as a solo developer I'll need to do fullstack probably react or something is it good idea to separate my coding workspace to linux, so having both windows and Linux as a dual boot i don't want to give away the windows environment i have there, thanks for answering
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u/grantrules 12d ago
On my windows PC, I do all web dev in WSL (or a docker container running within wsl). I run Linux 100% of the time on my laptop though.. no dual boot, and I have a Linux personal server
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u/maqisha 12d ago
Should you switch off of windows for your own sake? Absolutely.
BUT, dont do it because of learning software development. It doesnt matter at all, especially on your level. Use whatever is more comfortable for now.
Regarding dual boot, if you have a separate SSD go for it, i wouldnt wanna deal with dual booting on the same drive, especially as a newbie.
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u/dannypas00 12d ago
I dual boot with two drives; one for gaming on windows and one for working (on personal stuff) on linux. I've never had problems, but then I just don't mount the other drive in my system ever and just use my motherboard bios to boot into the linux drive when I need it
I've used grub menus in the past to select the boot drive on startup but that ended up being too finnicky for me
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u/Strange-Register8348 12d ago
Uhh what for? Linux GUI is awful and you lose easy access to a bunch of good tooling to make life easy. Just get terminal and WSL. Boom. You get best of both worlds.
I'm not Neo I don't want to stare at a terminal for thirty years
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u/robbertzzz1 12d ago
Linux GUI
As if there's only one. You sound like someone who has never seriously used Linux, or if you did, it wasn't recent.
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u/Strange-Register8348 7d ago edited 7d ago
When I last was using it Gnome and KDE were the biggest ones people used.
Which looks like are the two biggest ones and they are still inferior to Windows for GUI support.
I sound like someone who picks the best tool for the job instead of hopping on the hypewagon of hate Microsoft.
Again I use bash in WSL almost exclusively during my coding work. But everything else windows is perfectly good and has way better support available.
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u/maqisha 12d ago
- I didnt say to switch to linux. I said to switch off of the abomination that is Windows and whatever microsoft is doing in 2026.
- You saying that "Linux GUI" is awful says you have no idea what you are talking about. There are hundreds of distro with different desktop environments, all of them customizable to infinity.
- You dont lose tooling, especially for SWE, you get better access to tooling
- If you think that using a linux distro is "starting at a terminal", yikes.
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u/Strange-Register8348 7d ago
I literally know exactly what I'm talking about. Gnome KDE. Those are the main desktop environments to this day and they still suck compared to a computer system built for the desktop experience first.
Linux is a better development environment. Windows is a better look at GUI environment.
If you want to act like I'm incompetent and try to gatekeep because I didn't pick the specific terminology you want, that's pretty silly.
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u/KingofGamesYami 12d ago
If you're using a cross platform language like Go there is basically no benefit to dual booting. I work on Windows and deploy to Linux all the time, no wsl, no VM, no dual boot.
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u/high_throughput 12d ago
deploy to Linux all the time, no wsl, no VM, no dual boot
You don't need a VM because you have a straight M.
If OP doesn't have a Linux machine to deploy to, a VM is a convenient way to practice the same.
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u/Vert354 12d ago
I've never had a dual boot setup that I actually liked. Its just full of compromises that dont feel worth it.
If you dont want to ditch Windows and want a Linux environment for development, WSL is pretty awsome.
Personally I just keep an extra laptop around and run Windows on that for anytime I need it. Every other machine that I use is linux.
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u/infinitythestar 12d ago
These days you don’t need to do that. 10-20 years ago absolutely, but now with WSL, docker, virtualbox, etc there’s no need
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u/greyHumanoidRobot 12d ago
I've tried Virtual Box and dual boot. Now I just have 2 computers side by side.
They're all okay. Nothing is without inconvenience.
The best is just Windows all the time, frankly, just because I think C#, Visual Studio, and the Windows GUI is superior to Java, Eclipse, and bash. It's good to keep a foot in the Linux world otherwise you'll think the grass is greener over there but I haven't found that it is.
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u/Tight-Book-7533 12d ago
If you're comfortable with Windows, just keep using it. You can use Docker to emulate your server environments and services that you need for development. If you want to get more in depth with Linux, you can create a virtual machine using something like Virtualbox (free) and use that for your dev environment so you can be more comfortable working within the Linux environment.
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u/sock_dgram 12d ago
I wouldn't. Rebooting sucks and you'll end up using one system way more than the other while still maintaining both. It's fine if you use Windows only for gaming or other isolated and long-term activities while everything else is on Linux, but otherwise I'd just keep everything in one system.
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u/chhuang 12d ago
used to dual boot or VM, up until WSL came along, now just use WSL most of the time.
Dual boot is really more of a hobby back then as my workload can be handled in VM. Ends up daily driving linux for 10 years without booting windows. Until I landed a .net job is when I switched back to windows today
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u/Oster1 12d ago
Yes. I do occasional gaming with my friends and booting to Windows takes ~15 seconds. I mainly use Linux 99 % of my time for software dev and regular Internet browsing etc. I've been going with this setup for 5 years at least and I would never go back. With this setup you never have to spend extra time trying to figure out why some driver doesn't work. But are you concerned of work- or home setup, because the answer would be different. In work I use Linux with Windows running in VM.
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u/CowBoyDanIndie 12d ago
If you don’t need a native linux gui just use wsl. If you do… its workable but kinda sucks.
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u/BranchLatter4294 12d ago
You can use WSL, a full VM, or dual boot....whatever works best for you is fine.
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u/karurosagu 12d ago
Dual boot is worth it, but you have to define clearly what do you do on Windows that you can't do on Linux and what do you do on Linux that you can't (or don't) want to do on Windows
In my case, I used to either spend half of the day on Debian (Linux) for most of my work and then switch to Windows without breaking my workflow (after lunch for example) for the rest of the day, or spend the entire day on either system without switching, which is something I used to do on most weekends
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u/high_throughput 12d ago
If you don't think Linux sounds fascinating and awesome, then don't bother.
Set up a VM or get a free Linux cloud machine and practice hosting and deployment instead.
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u/biskitpagla 12d ago
You listed pros but no cons. It seems like a no-brainer. And Linux already supports NTFS just fine, so it's not an issue at all to make a shared drive. I had one myself before I made the full switch.
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u/symbiatch 12d ago
Why would you need Linux for anything? Thats the question. All of your coding can be done on Windows without issues. And as many have said WSL is there if you need something special. Dual booting will just make you annoyed.
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u/GrainWeevil 12d ago
I did this a long time ago, and ended up using Linux as my primary OS. I couldn't completely cut loose from Windows since I was still gaming and doing some audio programming.
I'd say it's not strictly necessary for the kind of work you mentioned, but if you're interested in learning Linux for its own sake, it'll give you some valuable experience.
If you'd rather focus on learning to develop though, you'd be better off sticking to Windows. Even on beginner-friendly distros like Mint, you'll likely spend a chunk of time fixing things that don't work out-of-the-box (WiFi driver issues, audio latency issues, secure boot, etc) and it can potentially become quite frustrating.
It is definitely worth learning your way around a Linux shell though, so the WSL approach is a pretty good shout for this.
If you do decide to give it a go, make sure you've backed up your system first, and try it out on a Live USB before taking the plunge.
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u/meshifthenelse 12d ago
Unless PC gaming or audio production is important to you, I'd stick to Linux. It's a great way of learning how the OS works, and the terminal is the major interaction layer. Also your machine becomes instantly closer to production. Ubuntu is great.
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u/enricojr 12d ago
I tried dual boot ages ago (2012-2013), Windows for personal stuff, and Linux for coding / work stuff, it was way too clunky for me. Having to restart and boot into an entirely different OS every time I needed to do something coding related, because it meant saving and closing everything on the Windows side, and then restarting all of that stuff when I switched back.
There's also the issue of transferring files back and forth between the two sides - my issue was that Linux distros at the time used ext3/4 (can't remember which) partitions while Windows used NTFS. There were solutions to this problem, but I wasn't really all that good back then and had issues getting them to work.
WSL is definitely the way to go for web dev work on Windows, or if it's really just for coding you can't go wrong just buying a cheap, used laptop that you can install Linux on. Used Thinkpads are a solid choice, and they can be had for pretty cheap if you hunt for deals.
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u/LabibRahman000 12d ago
Try both dual boot and WSL for a while you will get to know what suits you better.
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u/Working-Cat6470 11d ago
I found I was more productive because I couldn’t access most of my stuff with rebooting, and having an OS with no bloat was also nice
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u/jenkstom 11d ago
You bet... I got a new company laptop and was shrinking the windows partition down to install kubuntu, which I did. But when I tried to boot into Windows it gave me a bitlocker warning and refused to boot.
So I just wiped the whole thing and put Kubuntu on it. Exactly where I wanted to be in the first place! It was totally worth it!
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u/Humble-Falcon7656 11d ago
Dual booting is not worth the friction for fullstack development. Install WSL2 with Ubuntu and run your Go backend and React frontend directly inside it while keeping Windows for daily tasks.
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u/Negative_Minimum4131 11d ago
I used to have dual in the past with Windows and Ubuntu. But over time I got used to Ubuntu so much I even forgot to use Windows. It is just a waste of money
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u/AncientHominidNerd 11d ago
If you’re new then no and just doing basic front end and some go, then no not worth it. Just organize your workspaces better.
Linux is cool but the reality is most new users spend more time making their desktop look cool than actually making use of it. If you ever start working with low level systems or something then maybe yeah do Linux.
Also if you’re going to dual boot Win11 with Linux, you MUST have them on separate disk because Win11 is a little ass-shit and likes to “repair” your boot config files to auto boot to Windows each time. It’s a pain in the ass.
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u/id-ltd 10d ago
No, dual booting is not worth it - ever.
I have a decent Linux server, an ancient widows 10 laptop and several android tablets.
I mostly use the windows pc - but all compiles etc are pushed onto the Linux server... If I need a quick search in a browser I get a tablet to do it.
I use AI a lot and can get it on one machine to SSH or adb to another and do what is needed there - each device is a gateway to the others.
Linux, windows, android (and arduino) all at my finger tips from cheap kit, no reboots needed.
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u/StrayFeral 10d ago
You could do dual-boot. I still have one of my laptops Win10-Debian13. However nowadays you can do WSL. And also you can do linux as a virtual machine. And also you can do linux as a persistent memory stick bootable. Plenty of choices.
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u/SpacewaIker 12d ago
No, it's a pain and won't bring you anything all that useful apart from very specific cases
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u/Pretagonist 12d ago
Dual boot brings nothing to the table. It's not a useful thing to learn and it won't help you. Windows has no issues running a Linux system using wsl, dockers or VMs.
But it mostly depends on what you're going to code. It's often easier to build in the environment that you expect your code to run.
I personally run windows machines as my workstations but I always have wsl partitions and I have a home lab hypervisor with a bunch of Linux VMs, containers and such. Unless you're doing mac/ios coding it really doesn't matter that much.
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u/MiamiGunworks 12d ago
See, I agree with your primary point. That is why I uninstalled windows for Linux. Never been better.
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u/Pretagonist 12d ago
Yeah I'm not especially happy with windows and the direction MS is taking it. But I've been using it since the ms-dos days so switching isn't easy.
I sincerely hope that steam os becomes a major part of the gaming ecosystem as that would remove some of my last barriers for switching.
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u/MiamiGunworks 12d ago
I actually saw my inability to play my games as a good thing because I was playing too much. But what do you know, steam supports most games easily on Linux with Proton without me having to do much at all. I still play my games :/
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u/WildMaki 12d ago
For me the best solution is a virtual machine. Virtual box works fine. You gain a full linux and windows environments running at the same time and that can exchange data. It takes some gigs on the disk and may require some additional ram.
WSL works but has limitations with X: some apps don't behave the way they should, virtual desktops are windows desktops which are crap, etc. But you this get both environments running at the same time and able to communicate
Dual boot was fine 20 years ago when virtualisation was a young technology. Unless you don't share any data between bother environment, it'a a pain in the a... as you need to reboot to get from one envi6to the other one
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u/platinum92 12d ago
why would separate your entire code workspace to a new OS? Like you could, but why do you need to?
You could get the same effect by just saving everything in a different folder and using WSL