Sharing my real experience Linux and Windows
I first made the mistake of installing Linux on the same partition as Windows. That created a lot of problems later. Always install Linux in a different partition. Don’t touch the one where Windows is already installed.
BitLocker was another big issue. If the system breaks or something changes in the boot setup, Windows suddenly asks for the BitLocker recovery key. If it’s not saved, you’ll get stuck like I did. I had to log in to my Microsoft account and find it. It’s better to turn BitLocker off or at least keep the key saved before starting.
Fast Boot caused multiple issues. It keeps the NTFS drive in a half-on state, so Linux can’t write to it only read. I had to turn Fast Boot off from Windows power settings. In some cases, Fast Boot also messed with the GRUB menu it skipped Linux and directly booted into Windows. Disabling Fast Boot fixed that too.
Secure Boot didn’t cause problems in my case modern Linux systems handle it well.
One of the most frustrating things was trying to create a Windows bootable USB from a Linux system. There are flashing tools made for Linux I remember using one called WoeUSB but they didn’t work properly. The USB either didn’t boot or gave errors. It’s not that creating a bootable drive is hard, but for a new user, it’s really confusing. I ended up using Rufus, which works perfectly but the problem is, Rufus only runs on Windows. So unless you have a second device with Windows, you get stuck. It sounds simple, but for someone trying dual boot for the first time, this part wastes a lot of time.
During installation, I didn’t create partitions manually. I just cleared some free space from Windows, and Linux took care of the rest. Also, no need to create a second EFI both Windows and Linux can use the same one.
After installation, my GRUB boot menu didn’t show Windows properly. To fix that, I installed a tool called Grub Customizer in Linux. It helped me reorder and clean up the boot menu easily without touching any complex files.
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