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Waiting for this to work on windows. My gaming machine is a windows machine, so that's where my GPU is. Not willing to add a Linux partition, and the "Linux in

Waiting for this to work on windows. My gaming machine is a windows machine, so that's where my GPU is. Not willing to add a Linux partition, and the "Linux in Windows" support doesn't work with AMD gpus.

Aaronstotle 3y ago
You could add another ssd and have that be a linux distro. Its not a partition per se, since the whole drive is dedicated to it. I have that on my PC and I like it a lot
- smallmancontrov 3y ago
  This is the way. Using a partition is just begging for an update (Windows or Linux) to kill your boot. Convert the amount of time you would spend periodically fixing a broken boot into a dollar amount and suddenly having a separate SSD looks dirt cheap. See also: fixing software bluetooth issues, especially those caused by dual boot, by using an external 3.5mm or toslink -> bluetooth transmitter. I use a B03Pro and haven't had to fight bluetooth pairing / quality / microphone issues in years, despite dual booting. Software sucks. Replace it with dedicated hardware and your life will suck less.
  - tombert 3y ago
    > Using a partition is just begging for an update (Windows or Linux) to kill your boot. Everyone says that, but I really haven't found that to be true in the last 12 years or so. I dual-booted Windows and Arch Linux for multiple years (2014-2017), doing plenty of system updates. I never really had any boot issues caused by an update. The only time I ever had any boot issues is when I was mucking with Grub configs and I didn't really know what I was doing. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've had a ton of computers, many of which I've dual-booted with partitions, and it feels like a pretty streamlined process that doesn't seem to break.
    - smallmancontrov 3y ago
      My lived experience is just wildly different from yours and stretches from shortly after 9/11 to about 2019 when I swore off partitions. > The only time I ever had any boot issues is when I was mucking with Grub configs and I didn't really know what I was doing. Why were you mucking with Grub configs? Because something went wrong. Why did you know what you were doing? Because it was far from the first time something had gone wrong. Beware the rose-tinted glasses.
      - tombert 3y ago
        > Why were you mucking with Grub configs? Because something went wrong. Because I needed to enable a driver, actually, and something on the Arch forums or AskUbuntu said that I could enable it in a boot parameter in my grub config. I cannot remember the specific driver, but it was absolutely not to fix any boot partition issues. Also, I explicitly stated that I didn't know what I was doing in the comment you're replying to. Please don't get me wrong; I really don't have any rose-tinted glasses in regards to Linux. I'm basically a Mac person now; my work computer is a Mac M3, my home computer is a MacBook i9. I do have NixOS dual-booted on my personal computer, and it's been a nightmare to get all the drivers working. Just kidding, they still don't work, because the Linux drivers for the T2 MacBooks are garbage. There's a good chance that I will be nuking the Linux partitions this weekend in all honesty. The only thing that runs Linux full time in my house is my server, which runs a NixOS install on a tmpfs root. It's not like I have a ton of love for Linux, if I did I would probably still be using it for my daily driver, but I just haven't had the dual-boot-partition issues that people complain about. Maybe it's because I so rarely actually went to Windows, but grub more or less did the job. I will acknowledge that getting Linux installed in a secureboot environment continues to be a pain, however.
        smallmancontrov 3y ago
        Windows is usually the side that causes problems, so if you stayed out of it or supervised the updates that could be why. The most common killer combo is that Windows tries an update, reboots as part of it, and the reboot unexpectedly (from Windows point of view) goes into Linux. Some time later you log into Windows, it looks at the clock, realizes the reboot didn't go as planned, and flips its shit into some kind of hare-brained recovery process that winds up overwriting your bootloader with something that can't load Linux and can't load Windows either. It doesn't happen every time so clearly there are heuristics, but it definitely happens some of the time because the dead windows loader it leaves behind is distinctive and unmistakable. That said, I've seen both Ubuntu and Fedora updates that automatically fixed the bootloader until it was broken, so it's wrong to fingerpoint too hard here. The upshot is that "leave bootloader on boot drive alone" isn't part of the implicit operating system social contract, but "leave bootloader on non-boot drive alone" is, so you can solve a big hairy software problem with a small hardware investment.
- therealfiona 3y ago
  If you want to not be moving SATA cables, or worse, swapping NVME drives, you're still having to modify the boot loader, which is probably what OP worries about. I've had a bad time trying to dual boot due too boot loaders not working the way the manual says they should.
tester756 3y ago
We've came to the sad state of ecosystem where tools work by default on Linux and rarely on Windows
- rubatuga 3y ago
  Don't fret, Microsoft and AMD are working together, Windows recently added NPU usage to Task Manager: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/windows-task-manager-will-soon-include-amd-npu-activity https://www.extremetech.com/computing/windows-task-manager-w...
- Zambyte 3y ago
  Is it sad? It seems like the natural conclusion of locking down your software and making it (both technically and legally) hard to extend.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  The nVidia stack seems to work on Windows in various ways, so it's up to AMD to be competitive with respect to compatibility.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  The tools I rely on, work just fine on Windows, natively.
- curt15 3y ago
  Why "sad"? Linux users have had to stomach second-class status in so many other software categories.
- weebull 3y ago
  > We've came to the happy state of ecosystem where tools are available to everyone and not just those who pay Microsoft for access.
renewiltord 3y ago
Just use a live USB. New USB-3.0 external drives are fast. Then you can just switch boot device when BIOS starts and switch OS without needing chainloader. GRUB very stable these days, but if you don't want any hassle at all, this will be completely separate.

Aaronstotle 3y ago

You could add another ssd and have that be a linux distro. Its not a partition per se, since the whole drive is dedicated to it. I have that on my PC and I like it a lot

smallmancontrov 3y ago
This is the way. Using a partition is just begging for an update (Windows or Linux) to kill your boot. Convert the amount of time you would spend periodically fixing a broken boot into a dollar amount and suddenly having a separate SSD looks dirt cheap. See also: fixing software bluetooth issues, especially those caused by dual boot, by using an external 3.5mm or toslink -> bluetooth transmitter. I use a B03Pro and haven't had to fight bluetooth pairing / quality / microphone issues in years, despite dual booting. Software sucks. Replace it with dedicated hardware and your life will suck less.
- tombert 3y ago
  > Using a partition is just begging for an update (Windows or Linux) to kill your boot. Everyone says that, but I really haven't found that to be true in the last 12 years or so. I dual-booted Windows and Arch Linux for multiple years (2014-2017), doing plenty of system updates. I never really had any boot issues caused by an update. The only time I ever had any boot issues is when I was mucking with Grub configs and I didn't really know what I was doing. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've had a ton of computers, many of which I've dual-booted with partitions, and it feels like a pretty streamlined process that doesn't seem to break.
  - smallmancontrov 3y ago
    My lived experience is just wildly different from yours and stretches from shortly after 9/11 to about 2019 when I swore off partitions. > The only time I ever had any boot issues is when I was mucking with Grub configs and I didn't really know what I was doing. Why were you mucking with Grub configs? Because something went wrong. Why did you know what you were doing? Because it was far from the first time something had gone wrong. Beware the rose-tinted glasses.
    - tombert 3y ago
      > Why were you mucking with Grub configs? Because something went wrong. Because I needed to enable a driver, actually, and something on the Arch forums or AskUbuntu said that I could enable it in a boot parameter in my grub config. I cannot remember the specific driver, but it was absolutely not to fix any boot partition issues. Also, I explicitly stated that I didn't know what I was doing in the comment you're replying to. Please don't get me wrong; I really don't have any rose-tinted glasses in regards to Linux. I'm basically a Mac person now; my work computer is a Mac M3, my home computer is a MacBook i9. I do have NixOS dual-booted on my personal computer, and it's been a nightmare to get all the drivers working. Just kidding, they still don't work, because the Linux drivers for the T2 MacBooks are garbage. There's a good chance that I will be nuking the Linux partitions this weekend in all honesty. The only thing that runs Linux full time in my house is my server, which runs a NixOS install on a tmpfs root. It's not like I have a ton of love for Linux, if I did I would probably still be using it for my daily driver, but I just haven't had the dual-boot-partition issues that people complain about. Maybe it's because I so rarely actually went to Windows, but grub more or less did the job. I will acknowledge that getting Linux installed in a secureboot environment continues to be a pain, however.
      - smallmancontrov 3y ago
        Windows is usually the side that causes problems, so if you stayed out of it or supervised the updates that could be why. The most common killer combo is that Windows tries an update, reboots as part of it, and the reboot unexpectedly (from Windows point of view) goes into Linux. Some time later you log into Windows, it looks at the clock, realizes the reboot didn't go as planned, and flips its shit into some kind of hare-brained recovery process that winds up overwriting your bootloader with something that can't load Linux and can't load Windows either. It doesn't happen every time so clearly there are heuristics, but it definitely happens some of the time because the dead windows loader it leaves behind is distinctive and unmistakable. That said, I've seen both Ubuntu and Fedora updates that automatically fixed the bootloader until it was broken, so it's wrong to fingerpoint too hard here. The upshot is that "leave bootloader on boot drive alone" isn't part of the implicit operating system social contract, but "leave bootloader on non-boot drive alone" is, so you can solve a big hairy software problem with a small hardware investment.
therealfiona 3y ago
If you want to not be moving SATA cables, or worse, swapping NVME drives, you're still having to modify the boot loader, which is probably what OP worries about. I've had a bad time trying to dual boot due too boot loaders not working the way the manual says they should.

tester756 3y ago

We've came to the sad state of ecosystem where tools work by default on Linux and rarely on Windows

rubatuga 3y ago
Don't fret, Microsoft and AMD are working together, Windows recently added NPU usage to Task Manager: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/windows-task-manager-will-soon-include-amd-npu-activity https://www.extremetech.com/computing/windows-task-manager-w...
Zambyte 3y ago
Is it sad? It seems like the natural conclusion of locking down your software and making it (both technically and legally) hard to extend.
PeterisP 3y ago
The nVidia stack seems to work on Windows in various ways, so it's up to AMD to be competitive with respect to compatibility.
pjmlp 3y ago
The tools I rely on, work just fine on Windows, natively.
curt15 3y ago
Why "sad"? Linux users have had to stomach second-class status in so many other software categories.
weebull 3y ago
> We've came to the happy state of ecosystem where tools are available to everyone and not just those who pay Microsoft for access.

renewiltord 3y ago

Just use a live USB. New USB-3.0 external drives are fast. Then you can just switch boot device when BIOS starts and switch OS without needing chainloader. GRUB very stable these days, but if you don't want any hassle at all, this will be completely separate.