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Comment by bheadmaster | Hacker News Reader

I'm 99% sure you've installed Windows first, and then Linux afterwards, which is what the parent comment said: "dual boot system with Linux first".

If not, please share the instructions on how you installed Linux first, and Windows second, because I'd really like to know.

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This is what worked on my laptop with one drive: I installed Fedora. Before rebooting I used GParted to resize the disk creating space for a Windows partition. After that I rebooted and installed Windows on the new empty partition. Done.

Interesting, thanks!

One question - did you shrink partition from the front, or from the back of the disk?

Usually Windows has to be in front of the Linux, so if it's from the back, I'd really have to try that!

With MBR (master boot record) partitioning, Windows had to be on a primary partition, and it was only possible to have four of them. Linux could be installed to a primary or extended partition, of which there could be more.

As far as I know the order never actually mattered as long as Windows could have a primary partition. The newer GPT system doesn't have such a distinction or low limits (Windows is limited to 128 partitions per disk; I think Linux can handle more).

With UEFI, it is easy; each operating system has it's own bootloader in its own directory in ESP, and the UEFI itself contains boot manager, so you can boot whatever you want. It just doesn't show menu by default like grub does, you have to press a key to show the menu. That's about the difference.

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