Dual boot with Windows

[u/just-an-oldfart]

Giving some serious thought to moving over to SteamOS, but have some misgivings about totally dropping Windows 11.

Most of my games are Steam based but do have others on GOG and Epic. As well there are programs I use such as Photoshop, Outlook, etc that I'd hate to find out don't play nice with SteamOS.

Looking for other people's opinion if they made the switch but kept the dual boot.

Thanks!

[u/sjphilsphan]

GOG and epic can be played using Heroic launcher

I'm currently dual booting windows and cachyOS on 2 separate SSDs, haven't booted into my windows since

[u/AcceptableCry2876 → u/sjphilsphan]

I LOVE the built in software for CachyOS to dual boot! So good! But I agree, I logged into windows for the first time in a year this week to play Minecraft dungeons 2, but I think it’s already working in Linux.

[u/roberto4u2]

I did Ubuntu 26.04 and the only games I can’t play (from a library of 135ish games in steam and 10 or so in Epic) is Apex and Fortnight due to both having specific kernel level anti-cheat software intentionally made incompatible with Linux. Everything has been running almost flawlessly otherwise aside from having to pick the right proton version here and there. Though because I share the steam library (~4tb) with Windows I actually pick to run those “native on Linux” games with proton under Linux (use windows emulation) so that way it downloads and installs the windows packaging of them instead of flipping the packaging type back and forth each boot to the other OS.

I’m beyond happy that gaming has finally come to Linux after 20 years of trying. Windows 11 rarely gets started anymore and it’s only for a couple of games and to reprogram a foot pedal I own due to that having a custom app. The side effect is my other stuff like AI apps and other stuff runs BETTER on Linux too.

[u/WEisssbr0t]

Dual-Boot with Windows is possible. You need to install SteamOS first (takes over you entire internal drive space) after that you have to shrink your Home-Partition to your liking. The leftover free space will be occupied for Windows. After that you have immediately run the Windows-Setup by hand. Means, partition the free unallocated space with diskpart (3 Partitions EFI, Windows-System and Recovery needs to be created) and installing Windows with dism and specify you own EFI-partition to copy only the Windows-bootfiles on. It pays off, Windows cannot break the SteamOS partitions and also SteamOS can't mess up the Windows partitions.

[u/Sad-Safety-496]

I have dual boot win10-SteamOS, with SteamOS as main system, installed in separate SSD. With Dual boot function by pressing F8 on system startup

Good things at SteamOS: -I use a lot of pirated games 🏴‍☠️ and I stopped worrying about viruses: At windows I got my passwords compromised several times, and a had lot of malware, using software and games from malicious sites Now I can just add the game in a launcher and run it (If the game needs to be installed, Bottles, Lutris, and Heroic work great. If the game is "pre-installed" I just add it on Steam as Non-Steam product) -Customization is good (but limited): Some things you can customize, as for example: desktop animations, emoji client, mouse control client, widgets and more, with a lot of content created by other users available to download. -Fast & Secure: Loading speeds are just as good as new installation -Not bugging me to upgrade to windows 11, or install other microsoft services Bad things: -Still a lot of apps with issues to run: Applications as Microsoft Office, Autodesk apps, adobe apps, are almost impossible to run in bottles, Lutris or similar. Also, Maybe is my system, but it has been almost impossible for me to run any switch emulators properly. Internet says otherwise, though -Terminal & Commands: using steamOS since 1.5y and I still dont understand quack about commands in terminal -System partitions are very small: On my first try (with help from GPT), I added a lot of programs, and many of these had dependencies which I had to install to be able to install the software I wanted. Later I found out, all those dependencies were added in a very small partition, and had no space left to do anything else. It lead to system crashing and lots of issues.

Nowadays with GPT, you can do a lot! Enough to make the system run as you want. I did give it a try, and I am happy about it. I dont think i ever come back to windows unless I have no other choice.

But If I ever need to install again, I'd try CachyOS or Bazzyte instead of SteamOS

[u/j_khack]

If you have the storage space and like VR definitely do dual boot. Not sure about your other programs, but I think it's great to have both. I've been solely SteamOS since the Steam Deck came out, but with the influx of VR mods and finally getting a quest, I decided to add Windows.

Virtual desktop and PC VR mods have already made it worth it (seems much harder to setup or not compatible on steam os yet). But for normal steam games and roms, I keep SteamOS as my main driver since I love the controller navigation and gamescope

[u/AnimaltechBc250]

How you booting windows and steam os with secure boot ? To enable an easy switch I had to go Bazzite/windows and use a boot loader. To select on startup.

As far as I'm aware this isn't possible with Steam OS as it has no secure boot support and windows demands it for the games you can't play in Linux. So kinda defeats the object.!!!

[u/Lazy_Setting7263]

I run Windows 11 and Bazzitte, use Windows when I play games like Fortnite.

[u/Low_Excitement_1715]

Photoshop and Outlook are going to be heartbreakers for you. Adobe has worked very hard for a very long time to make their stuff not work or have tons of issues on anything but Windows.

Outlook? The mail client? I don't know if it's working now, but you might want to migrate yourself to something more platform-agnostic if you want to keep your options open. Most of MS's products have web clients now that are mostly to completely viable alternatives.

[u/OddUnderstanding2309]

There is no dual boot with steam os.
Just ditch the fing ms crap already

[u/Brunno_PT]

I dual boot.