Should I continue to dual-boot?

[podunk2010]

I've been dual-booting Linux Mint for about a year on my Acer Aspire laptop. With Qiana coming out soon I was considering switching over to just using Linux Mint since I haven't gone back to Windows even once the whole time I've been using Mint. My question is what the advantages are to switching it to a single OS? Thanks for any and all help.

[ClutchDisc]

Advantages:

You are windows free... !!!

You have a "bigger" hard drive,

You can sleep better at night knowing that windows isn't on your computer anymore!!!

If you don't need windows, don't keep it!

[tdockery97]

Unless you are really short of hard disk space, my personal opinion is that there is at least a small advantage to dual booting. If by small chance something disastrous happened to your Mint installation, you would at least have another OS to temporarily fall back to until you got Mint reinstalled and up and running again.

[WinterTroubles]

Hi podunk2010

I'm new to Linux and to dual booting, so I can't offer an informed view I'm afraid

However, as I myself have reached a similar conclusion after a much shorter length of time I thought I'd offer my point of view..

Put simply, why keep the added complication of dual booting something you don't seem to need? Dual booting, in this case, seems to be just something else that could cause unnecessary problems in the future.

Of course, there is the argument that too many modern devices still rely on access to windows to update, but I'm sure you already check such details before spending your hard earned on new gadgets.. ( hmm, that sounds a little sarcastic to me, not meant to be. couldn't think how to rephrase it sorry )

[Mute Ant]

No. Multi-Boot is just messy. If you wander through the questions on these boards, problems with Dual Boot or GRUB or Access-My-Windows-Partition are very common. One fast quiet drive, one operating system, live-DVD for emergencies, and original data archived to DVD-R.

[mbohets]

I dual booted for some time.
At some point, I needed more disk space and threw off Windows.

[turtlebay777]

I have never had any problems with dual booting Windows and Mint on the same hard drive (different partitions obviously!). Since Linux can read and write to NTFS I can use that partition for saving data in Mint and I have one old archive program which refuses to work in Wine.

[clfarron4]

Unless you are really short of hard disk space, my personal opinion is that there is at least a small advantage to dual booting. If by small chance something disastrous happened to your Mint installation, you would at least have another OS to temporarily fall back to until you got Mint reinstalled and up and running again.

This.

Whilst I almost never touch Windows, I do need it for printing with my USB printer (network printing I can do in Linux) and to sooth my occasional urge to play Crysis.

[I2k4]

I've been dual booting W7 and Ubuntu / Mints since 10.04 on my netbook. No problems. Recently things I thought I needed Windows for, like my income tax sofware, have gone cloud based so it's an option, and i decided to go all Mint with another laptop. I have some older peripherals that won't work right with Mint and will with W7, so I'm keeping one machine with that functionality. It's just a personal matter of uses and, as others mentioned, HDD space. XP and W7 have been perfectly sound and useful OSs and I owe them a lot for years of reliable service, so anti-Windows rah! rah! seems childish.

[xenopeek]

Like tdockery97 mentioned it might be handy to have a secondary OS installed as rescue tool. Though you could do as some others here do and have two copies of Linux Mint installed (an old one, and a current one; rotate each time you upgrade).

But I can only see two reasons for keeping Windows installed if <you> don't need it anymore:
- If you would ever consider selling the laptop. That might be easier to do with Windows on it.
- If you think you might ever need to do a BIOS upgrade. Depends on the BIOS if you can do that directly from the BIOS (yes please!) or if you *must* use a Windows-only program to load new BIOS images.

The first reason I mention is the only one I'd really put some thought to though.

[shengchieh]

I started out as multi-boot. And after an year I went single-boot. Easier not to mess around with window and its updates, AV, etc. My advice for newbies is to use two computers if they have them - one for window and
one for linux. For window users thinking about switching to linux, I advice taking their old computer (if they have one) and wipe window with linux.

Sheng-Chieh

[podunk2010]

I figured I'd give it a day and see what I got and am quite surprised at the response. I'm now leaning more toward single booting as the laptop is my secondary computer and my main desktop has windows. I'm still curious though if single booting gives any real advantage toward the OS? I would imagine it would speed it up at least a little but is it even noticeable. Again thanks for any help.

[xerion567]

I'm still curious though if single booting gives any real advantage toward the OS? I would imagine it would speed it up at least a little but is it even noticeable. Again thanks for any help.

No, there will be no change in speed from having extra an OS, just disk space. Unless you are low on disk space I would not recommend removing Windows.

You hadn't mentioned which Windows you had, but if it is Windows 8, and your machine has SecureBoot, and it is one of those wonky "you have to ask Windows for permission to get into your setup" types, you will effectively lock yourself out by removing Windows.