I recently dual booted linux Mint with Windows 10. This post mostly delas with what prompted me to do this , how was the process like and what has been my experience so far been like with Mint in dual boot .
Reason:
I have been learning to work with unix-like OSes (mostly linux distros like Fedora and Ubuntu derivatives like Lubuntu). I used Virtual box, VMware and WSL2 to perform this task. However, lately I was encountering weird errors in VMs and WSL. I was unable to update software and screen would randomly start flickering.
Concerns:
It was the straw that broke camel’s back and I decided to finally go for a dual boot. This was an interesting experience as I had never dealt with storage partitions before. I had read about problems caused by dual boot and was a bit apprehensive to try it. In the end I gathered up courage and started looking for an appropriate distro for a dual boot.
Choosing a distro:
My primary requirements for choosing a distro were simplicity, stability and widely-used.
I finally settled for Linux Mint with XFCE as I have had nice experience with both Mint and XFCE in past, and being closely related to Debian and Ubuntu hopefully there will not be many issues with software availability.
Process:
The actual process of dual-booting took me to the boot menu where I had to change boot device order to priortise USB Device. It was smooth sailing from here. Mint took care of creating partitions, downloading basic productivity software, and setting up GNU Grub.
Experience:
So far my experience with Mint in dual boot has been exciting and without any issues. I have mostly finished with setting up all the required applications like IDEs, internet browser, etc as per my requirements. I am looking forward to eventually make Linux Mint my primary OS.