Re: Modern Dual-Boot Setup Prcoedure (Dell XPS)

[Neal Becker <ndbecker2@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Dec 3, 2023 at 7:00 AM George N. White III <gnwiii@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, Dec 2, 2023 at 4:48 PM Tim Evans <tkevans@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Brand New Dell XPS 15 coming tomorrow, to replace my venerable Lenovo
T530.  (Looking forward to something a little lighter to lug around.)

It's been 10 years since I set the T530 up to dual-boot Fedora and Windows.

I'm sure I can figure out how to reduce the size of the Windows
partition to make space for Fedora, but am unsure of the process for
current PC BIOS and grub setup for dual boot. Or is the Fedora installer
smart enough to handle it for me?

Are there docs for this?  Thanks.

You should check the LHWDB <https://linux-hardware.org> for issues encountered by

linux users (sometimes there are comments suggesting workarounds.

You should use Windows tools to 1) update device firmware and 2) create "free space" 

for linux.  Dell has the "SupportAssist" app you should run immediately to update 

firmware and verify that everything works properly.   On my Dell I need to use F2 to

get to the "BIOS" configuration, and "F12" to get a list of boot options.  The problem is

that the system starts faster than my monitor (using DP to HDMI adapter cable) wakes 

up so on cold boot I have to guess about the timing to hit a function key.  I usually end 

up in Windows a couple times before I get into the BIOS screen I want.

The Windows tools have changed with recent updates to Windows 11 

as I discovered when installing F39 on a Dell desktop.  I just converted 

an existing linux partition to free space so didn't need to shrink the Windows 

partition.  A common mistake is allowing Windows assign a drive letter to 

the free space -- the Fedora installer looks for "free space".

About 1 yr back I installed fedora onto my wife's dell laptop with windows 10 for dual boot.  Despite significant and lengthy efforts to follow online guides to get windows to free up space I never got that to work - windows never gave up the space.  In the end installed into a spare 2G partition instead. 

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