Windows 11 and EndeavourOS dual boot - "install alongside" option

Hello, I am pretty new here, and really want to make the switch to Linux (EndeavourOS in this case). There are however few games that utilize anti-cheat that unfortunately don’t work on Linux (yet). Because of that I want to run a dual boot with Windows 11.

I currently have Windows 11 installed on my only NVME 2TB drive. This is how my Disk Management overview looks like:

I have followed following dual-boot guide: [root] Linux dual-boot Windows - General system / Community contributions - EndeavourOS , but I got pretty confused regarding partitioning.
Can’t I simply select the “Install alongside” option in EnOS’s installer?

I simply want to have 1.5TB for Linux, and remaining 500GB for Windows.

Any help is much appreciated.

You could do that.

However I suggest to shrink your Windows partition to the size you wish from within Windows itself. Windows tools know to do their windowsy things.

Later, in EnOS installer point it to that freed space and you should be good to go from there.

Edit to add: Make sure not to format that 100 MB EFI System Partition when installing EnOS.
That partition harbors your Windows boot stuff.

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Alright, that sounds doable, and understandable.

I have however few more further questions after going into the “manual partitioning” section of the installer:

  1. When I select the partition that I want to install Linux on, what mount point should I select, and what flag should I set?
  2. Do I need to have a swap partition (I have 32GB RAM and have never used it all up)? If so, how can I create it, and how big should it be?
  3. Can I leave Windows partition as NTFS, and Install Linux as ext4? Will they be compatible with each other?

I am sorry if these are dumb questions, but I really wish not to mess things up.

In the installer you would need to:

  • point it to the EFI System Partition >> mount point /boot/efi and flag it as boot (OBS! Not format)

  • point it to the free space >> mount point / and format EXT4

If you are not planning to use hibernation, you would not need a separate swap device.
In the case you would change your mind later on, this can always be done post-install as well.
There are several options. One is zram which would setup a compressed swap space in RAM whenever there is a need to swap out some pages out of RAM.

You should leave Windows partition as is. You could access it from your Linux system. If you need to write to that partition, you would need to make sure to shutdown your Windows properly. That is no fast startup and hibernation in Windows.

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That is exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

I have never used hibernation, nor did I even thought of using it. Therefore I don’t think I will need it now.
Thanks for clarifying that.

Alright, thanks makes things easier then.
I have already disabled fast startup, and hibernation in Windows, so that’s already configured properly I guess.

Will try it all out tomorrow, and hopefully all will go according to plan :slight_smile:
I will keep you posted! Thanks once again.

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You are welcome!
In case of any doubts, please post on the forum. There are always some people around to give you a hand. Good luck!

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This doesn’t include Valorant, right? If it does things will get a bit complicated.

Nope. I quit Valorant long time ago. In my case games that utilize EAC. For example Battlefield 2042.

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@Smokus

In case the installer complains that you should create an EFI system partition of 300 MB size, you have two options:

Either do as the installer says and create a new ESP, 300 MB FAT32 mounted at /boot/efi and flagged as boot. This would mean you will end up with two ESP on your disk with the possible advantage of separating boot files/folders of your Windows and Linux installations.

Or, if you want to share the same ESP (already exixtent), you could edit the file /etc/calamares/modules/partition.conf and decrease the size limit. In a terminal:

sudo nano /etc/calamares/modules/partition.conf

use the arrow keys to navigate to the line efiSystemPartitionSize and change the size from 300M to 100M. Press Ctrl-O, Enter, Ctrl-X.

Now you can launch the installer and it won’t complain about the ESP size.

/etc/calamares/modules/partition.conf

@pebcak Thanks for the lengthy explanation. Is there any drawback if I decide to edit the partition.conf file, and decrease the size from 300M to 100M? Are chances of me filling up those 100M high, or will that pretty much never happen?

I would like to choose the “correct/proper” option from the start so that I don’t have to deal with any potential isuses later on.

Not what I can tell. You will need to install a whole lot of bootloaders to fill-up 100MB.
My current ESP in an Arch install is 128 MiB and only 144 kb is used for the bootloader. You could read more abot ESP here >> https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_system_partition

It should/would work either way. The correct/proper way here is a bit dependent on the setup and and the UEFI implementation. If you read the article linked to above, it says:

the partition size can be as small as 2 MiB, in which case it could house nothing more than a boot loader

But as already mentioned, it is dependent on the context.

You could if you want to separate the two ESPs, create a second one only for EnOS. You should decide yourself which size.

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If that is the case, then I think that I will go with with path of editing partition.conf from 300M to 100M.
I will only have 2 OS’s (EnOS and Windows), and will eventually switch completely to only EnOS. I think that in that case I won’t be able to fill up those 100 MiB.

Since I am not that experienced in this field, I wouldn’t really try to experiment with things from the very beginning. Therefore I’d say that sharing the 100M ESP partition should suffice.

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Alright. Please just remember not to format the ESP. Just give it a mount point and the boot flag.
If you want to be on the safe side, you could also backup the content of the ESP into an storage device before attempting an install. Whatever you do, don’t format it.

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Gotcha, will pay close attention to that :slight_smile:
So basically I just need to select the “keep” option, and not the “format” after clicking on “Edit”, correct? And then just select the mounting point and the boot flag?

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You got it!

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@pebcak
I’ve spent numerous hours trying to figure out why Windows wouldn’t let me shrink my partition. It would only let me shrink 700 GB even though I had 1.5 TB of free space.
I finally got it shrunk as I wanted, but I am way too tired now to do the actual installation.

Will do it tomorrow, and will keep you posted.

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@pebcak I still decided to do the installation yesterday before going to bed. It has worked just as suspected.

I did the following steps:

I now have somewhere around 1.4TB for Linux, and the remaining 500 ish GB for Windows.

Booting into Linux, and Windows works as intented (although I will need to change the default boot order so that it defaults to Linux).

Thanks a lot for your help!

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You are welcome!
I am glad that everything worked out fine! Don’t hesitate to come back to the forum if you have any questions or issues or just want to hangout in #lounge:endeavour-pub

Enjoy your journey onboard Endeavour!
:enos_flag:

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