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I have Win10 on my laptop right now, but I would really rather switch back to Linux and just keep Win10 for games (especially since MS can't put out a decent update anymore it seems). I installed Manjaro (grub came automatically) and decided I wanted a distro that wasn't so... Simple and familiar. Everything is just handed to me like it's Windows machine, and I hate that it came with so much crap that I had to uninstall (first time I've installed a distro based on other people's opinion of it, and certainly the last time). I rather have a minimal install and just add what I need/want instead of cleaning up all the garbage tossed at me. I'm currently checking out Devuan, Void, and a few others in a virtual machine and will probably end up installing one of those instead. The problem is, right after installing Manjaro and not even using it much, my laptop was having problems when I was booted into Win10. It actually booted Win10 maybe 3/4 of the time and otherwise got stuck on a glitched up Manjaro Grub screen until I restarted my computer. And sometimes when my laptop goes to sleep on Win10, the exact same glitched out screen pops up and eventually the computer goes to sleep. I deleted the Manjaro partition from within Win10, and subsequently grub was deleted. I had to use a Win install disk to fix the Windows bootloader. So now I get to the crux of the issue:

I want Win10 to play games on and Linux for every day use. Win10 is not my home OS but I want it fully functional when I need it (I'm not giving up my games). I don't want grub to mess with my Win10 install at all as it did unexpectedly with the Manjaro install. I only have real experience with having just a single boot system with just Windows or with just Linux, so I've never run into this problem before and didn't expect it to occur. That being said, I don't know how to tackle this problem. I just want the two partitions to be completely independent of each other. Is it possible to have Windows on one partition with it's Win10 bootloader, and Linux on a seperate partition with its grub bootloader? So basically, I want to be able to choose to either boot into Windows from the boot medium selection screen and boot into Linux from the boot medium selection screen, instead of grub handling the booting of both operating systems.

Not sure if this matters, but I have an Acer Nitro 5 with a partitioned SSD (with the Win10 install and a larger partition waiting for Linux) and an HDD that I store the bulk of my files on. The SSD is on an MBR format.

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You can't select what partition to boot from from the BIOS boot device menu on a MBR partitioned disk. The reason for this that is is the MBR in track zero of the disk (not partition) contains the boot code.

Therefore if you want to want to dual boot you need a boot loader. You can use a Linux boot manager (and add a Windows boot entry) as you did before or you could use the Windows boot manager and add a Linux boot entry.

As you say you don't want Linux to interfere with your Windows install and assuming you installed Linux to your second partition you could then install syslinux to your second partition VBR rather than to the disk MBR. This means your existing Windows install is not affected.

This is achieved by installing syslinux and entering something like # syslinux --directory syslinux --install /dev/sda2 as described in the Arch wiki

You can then add a syslinux boot entry to the Windows boot manager as described in this answer How can I add Linux to the new Windows 8 boot manager?

If something goes wrong with your Linux install Windows should keep on working as it is unchanged.

Note it is possible to install other Linux loaders such as Grub Legacy to a partition as described here How do I install GRUB to a partiton and not MBR? but I find syslinux easier.

Using Grub2 is not recommended.

Warning: GRUB strongly discourages installation to a partition boot sector or a partitionless disk as GRUB Legacy or Syslinux does. This setup is prone to breakage, especially during updates.

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  • Thank you for your help. You told me things I didn't realize, I appreciate the advice!
    – A1_Brownies
    Commented Nov 22, 2018 at 20:11

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