How to convert to Linux
Dual Booting in the wake of Crowdstrike and Windows’ recent screw-ups
Since 2018, I have always gone through the trouble of installing Linux alongside Windows for every new laptop I worked with. This was done through dual booting — you partition the available space on your device between Windows and Linux. The latter has always felt far more intuitive for me as a web developer — it is fully customisable from the jump, is fully operable from the command line and doesn’t lock you out of your device for the sake of installing unsolicited updates.
Linux bestows you with a far greater responsibility over your operating system — which not a lot of users seem to be prepared for, given that only 4.1% of desktop users seem to use Linux compared to a whopping 72.9% for Windows. But maybe more people will come around. After all, CrowdStrike’s outage only seemed to bring down Windows-powered devices.
Therefore, in order to commemorate the one-week anniversary of hordes of flights being grounded because of CrowdStrike pushing a buggy update, I wanted to give a quick guide on how I’ve always created a dual boot partition between Linux and Windows. I like this system a lot because it gives me the flexibility and responsibility over my system that, as a developer, I need to get real work done while also giving me access to desktop apps that don’t run on Windows.
This guide will be center around installing Ubuntu — a popular distribution that I think is an ideal first choice for new Linux users. That said, I do hear that Linux Mint feels like Windows in the best ways possible.
Nonetheless, here are some of the steps I’ve taken to get to this partition:
1) (Optional) Backup data
This has been optional in my case because, every time I got a new laptop (whether through work or personal use), installing Linux would be one of the very first things I’d do.
But if you have data on your device you’d like to keep, you should definitely create a backup. Things can go wrong — even when using comprehensive guides like this one!
2) Create a bootable Ubuntu USB drive
You’d want to download the Ubuntu ISO (i.e. a copy of the Ubuntu operating system compressed into an image) onto a hard drive and make it into a bootable USB drive (i.e. something that would boot a new operating system onto your device) using a tool like Rufus.
3) Partition your hard drive
This would involve you going into Disk Management, right clicking on your main partition (or a lack of partition) and ‘shrinking volume’ to allow for one part of it to be used for Linux stuff.
Personally, I allocate half of the alloted space to Windows and half to Linux. It’s reasonably easy to change partition sizes later on.
4) Disable Fast Startup on Windows
This seems to mess with dual booting. Therefore:
Go to Control Panel, then Power Options and uncheck “Turn on Fast Startup”.
5) Restart your PC and start the booting process
After restarting, while your device is booting up again, press either F12, F2 or ESC. All the guides I followed told me to press one of those keys so I pressed them all. It worked every time.
6) Follow the prompts and instructions
You’ll be prompted to ‘install Ubuntu’ and will be taken through a few steps to customise your desktop — either with suggested applications or only the bare necessities. This is part of the beauty of Linux desktops. They’re what you make of them.
And, after a moment of installing and downloading and preparing this brave new world for you, you will, for better or worse, have the option to either go with Linux (Ubuntu)’s powerful flexibility or Windows’ world of convenience.
