I finally started the move over to Linux, and installed a dual boot system. So far liking it, except for 1 or 2 things. The big one is the process of dual booting.
I vaguely remember a friend a bunch of years ago always having the option to pick the OS on startup. Not having to hit F11 to pick the OS. Is there a way to do this? Everything I’ve found so far is about windows dual booting, which isn’t exactly helping.
Here’s my setup, so there’s an idea of what I’m working with.
Motherboard: MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Edge AC SSD 1 (Windows): Predator GM7000 2TB SSD 2(Linux Mint): Crucial P5 Plus 2TB
I just want to always have the choice of OS when starting up, without always having to hit F11 to get to the boot option. Any help is appreciated.
Edit: In case it matters, I installed windows on SSD 1 without SSD 2 installed, then did the same with Linux, removed SSD 1, and installed Linux to SSD 2 (using their respective slots) then put both in. So I didn’t install Linux with the dual boot option on the install screen.
Edit2: Got it working! As suggested, I had to change the boot order so Linux was primary instead of windows. Then had to change the timeout for grub from 0 to 30 (tried 5 but it was still too fast) and once I was able to see grub, I had the option to let it go into mint, run windows, or just pick Mint without waiting.
Way easier than going about it thinking windows first, since it refused to acknowledge i had another OS installed. Now I get to play around with drivers and software, and figure out why I can’t align my multiple monitors properly.
Thanks everyone!
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Odd…
Edit /etc/default/grub to include a timeout so the grub menu will be displayed before the default OS is run.
On top of this:
In the UEFI, make sure the Linux/grub drive is the first boot device.
What linux distro did you use?
Most all common Linux distros by default will install GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) alongside themselves, and recognize any other OS’es previously installed on the system when they do so. GRUB is a multi-bootloader that can select any bootable drive or partition that it detects when initially installed, or be reprogrammed with additional OS’es if you’re more advanced.
When you use your F11 menu to boot to Linux, do you see this screen show up for a couple seconds?:
If so, you’re already good for picking OS.
All you may need to do is switch your default boot order in the BIOS to boot from the Crucial drive with Linux Mint installed, rather than default to the Windows drive as I believe it is doing right now.
Hit F2 (i think for MSI?) on startup to get into your BIOS settings and look for the boot options menu, should look like this:
You just need to re-order the devices so the Linux hard drive is above the Windows drive, then your BIOS will try to boot from it first and hopefully give you GRUB.If that doesn’t work, e.g you don’t have GRUB, that’s more complex and will take some effort. May be worth just re-installing the distro or a different distro that will set up GRUB for you as manually adding bootloaders is above my skill set. And has a risk of leaving you with a non-bootable desktop.
Ok this is nearly exactly what I needed.
I had to change the timeout for grub from 0 to 30, and grub let’s me pick windows or Ubuntu. Ran it twice to make sure. Previously I had windows as the primary boot, but windiws wasn’t showing any other OS.
Thank you!
Fair warning, Windows has a bad habit of breaking GRUB and inserting itself as the default OS whenever it updates. Microsoft is historically not a good neighbor. Especially if you have them installed on the same drive. If you have separate drives, you’re usually fine. But if you partitioned a single drive and installed both next to each other, Windows will likely nuke your GRUB at some point.
Ahh, the zero timeout. Forgot some distros set that (I use Debian and it sets timeout to 5 seconds).
Glad it works, congrats on joining the dual boot world!
I had the same exact setup as you. Glad to hear it’s working now.
You can install “Grub Customizer” and personalize the menu appearance to what you want. Make it look like fallout or anything else. Just read the documentation before changing anything
Ok that’s kind of cool, I’ll be checking that out once I get everything working the way I want it lol.
I don’t know what the Mint default is off the top of my head, but you may be interested to know you can set up GRUB to default to your last booted OS as opposed to a fixed one every time.
It can be useful for updating through reboots or when you spend several days at a time on the same OS but you go back and forth every so often.
If you already have it set up that way, carry on. If not, you can find out how with a quick online search. It’s one of those things that really feel like they should be a menu toggle but Linux still defaults to adding some line of text in some config file because GUIs are for cowards.
I played with the grub settings a little bit, only cause I just wanted windows and mint next to each other instead of separated by a third option. It’s a nitpicky kind of thing, but I’m not stressing about it too much.
I’ll definitely be digging more into grub though to see what I can play with.
Yeah, it’s way more customizable than it seems to be, both visually and functionally. Definitely dig into it, it’s worth it even just in the amount of time it’ll save you menuing on each restart.
There are even ways to switch to Windows from within Linux and bypass having to mess with the menu (the other way around is a different story). Like a lot of Linux things, what’s surfaced, what’s approachable and what’s possible are very different things.
I went with Cinnamon Edition of Mint.
Ah so boot with Linux as the first (windows is currently first) and use Grub to get into windows when I want?
Now, does it matter that both OS are on their own drive entirely? I took out the windows drive when I installed Linux on the other SSD. I can run each OS completely independent. Saw, I forget where, that this was the best way to install so they’re fully independent of one another.
Yep. Boot grub (linux) first and it can do windoes when you choose.
It does not matter that the OS’es are on different physical drives, GRUB can index them just fine. Bootloader on one drive that can boot from multiple other drives is very common and I’ve set it up multiple times, as it is nice to have physical separation between OS’es and not have to deal with having 8 partitions of hell on one poor abused drive. The only issue that may arise is if you add or remove other physical drives or move the locations of existing drives as sometimes that can change how grub indexes them and it breaks. But that’s fairly easy to avoid if you pay attention and try not to touch bootable drives.
That’s not a problem at all, so long as the first boot device is the Linux drive.
GRUB has no issue chain-loading the windows bootloader. You can even set GRUB to default to Windows if you want, it’ll just show the menu for a while (whatever you set the timeout to be, I find 3 seconds to be plenty) and if nothing is selected, it will hand off to Windows.
If you want to boot Linux, just hit the down arrow key when you see the menu to stop the countdown and choose what you want to boot, then hit enter.
No its ok. When you jave both plugged in. Do a grub update (i forget the command) but then it’ll add windows to the grub list when it sees it.
Been a while since I tinkered with dualbooting so memory’s hazy, but see if you can install Grub after the systems have already been installed.
Grub by default has like a 3-5 second timer on startup where you can pick between Linux, and whatever options there are.
Usually it’s Linux first, Linux with an old kernels/ safe mode, then finally windows.
some motherboards suck with the startup options. my laptop can’t boot at all unless i go to bios boot menu and manually choose ubuntu(grub), and then either mint or windows. a bit off topic but a little thing that bugs me: mint by default has 30s grub timeout and apparently you can’t change that, editing the grub file does nothing…
Been a while since I messed with grub, but aren’t you supposed to run grub-mkconfig after the changes?
i did, probably a hundred times
So, just from what you’ve said, without getting more info from you, my guess as to what’s going on is that Windows has set things up to where it uses its own bootloader which isn’t set up to boot into Linux or chain-load your Grub2 or whatever Linux-capable bootloader.
And this F11 you’re talking about is probably the key your BIOS uses to let you into the BIOS configuration, yeah? And from there you can tell it to load Grub2 or whatever bootloader Mint set up when it was installed – the one that was nuked by Windows.
(I keep saying “Grub2”. It’s possible you selected something else like Syslinux or rEFInd or something when installing, but I think Grub2 is default for Mint.)
I think, just from some googling, what you’ll want to do, assuming the assumptions I’ve assumed above haven’t made asses out of anyone, is (in Mint with both SSDs plugged in):
>sudo grub-install <whatever your boot drive is -- something like /dev/sda or /dev/nvme0n1 or some such> >sudo update-grub(And you’ll need to replace the angle brackets part above with the actual drive name.
sudo grub-install /dev/sdaor whatever.)I think that first one should tell your system to switch from the Windows bootloader (which… I don’t think can even boot Linux… I haven’t used Windows since XP, so I don’t know for sure) to Grub2 which is capable of booting Linux, and capable of asking you which OS you want on boot. The second command is just to ensure Grub2 is properly configured. (It probably is already, but it won’t hurt to make double-sure.)
If that doesn’t work, it’s likely your Mint install is set up with a different bootloader. If that happens, I’d say:
- Let us know any error message you get from the above commands.
- Let us know what behavior you’re seeing instead of the desired results. (Like, no change and it’s still booting straight into Windows? Now it shows an OS-selection menu but only Mint as an option? Something else?)
- Search in your package manager for “bootloader” and report back which bootloader it says is installed.
Good luck! Hopefully that gets you going, but if not, definitely let us know your results!
So, for me at least, it was a matter of changing the boot order in my bios so Mint amwas primary, and windows secondary, then changing the timeout for grub from 0 to 30.
From there, I’m able to let it boot to Mint, boot into windows, or just force the mint to go through quicker.
Windows just refused to acknowledge any other OS.
Thank you for the help though!
Grub timeout setting “-1” is infinite, and will force it to wait until you have manually selected either option, if that’s what you desire as you described in your initial post. But I agree in practice 30 seconds is plenty.
Oh sweet! Glad you got it solved!
Not sure how it’s set up on Linux Mint by default, but you need os prober to find your Windows drive when updating Grub config.
So, if you don’t see the grub menu you need to configure the timeout or something, but if you do see the menu but it’s only options are for Linux, then you need to set up Grub with os prober.
(Technically you don’t need the os prober and could do it manually, but you probably shouldn’t)
