There is a game I am considering getting; it has been out for a few months now, and the devs are specifically blocking it from running under proton with a Kernel Level Anticheat which specifically blocks linux.
Folks on the discussion boards made the point tht it is technically possible to install windows for just one steam game, so I am looking for a guide on how to do that?
I’ve heard that if you don’t activate windows, you can still use it, and if you get the LSTC (?) Version of windows, it is not so annoying.
Does anyone have a guide for how to install windows alongside linux for one game?
If we have a discussion in the comments about whether it is tactically appropriate to give money to a game corporation that requires windows, i guess we can, but i would rather learn how to install windows in the least annoying way possible.
the safest fastest but expensive way, get a second drive that’s big enough to run windows and your game. disable the drive from BIOS boot options and add an entry to your bootloader. i salvaged an old 512gb sata to do this for firmware/some legal document things that only work on Windows.
there’s vfio but i believe you still need two video cards to get that working, one for the host one for the vm.
just never trust windows on your main boot drive that only leads to you having to recover your bootloader when a windows update replaces it. and this is not a question of if they will it is a question of when.
What is the game? If the company hates you so much to do this, you probably shouldn’t support them.
Friends don’t let friends play windows.
This… we need to show them we’re not going to support them if they pull this. Linux gaming is getting more and more popular. They’ll need to catch up.
If you must run Windows, do it on a completely separate device if you can. That way your one game that’s DRM-locked to Windows can stay on its own machine without Windows getting hostile to your Linux install like in a dual-boot.
If you don’t have/can’t obtain a separate device for installing Windows on and you must dual-boot, the safest way to do that is to disconnect your Linux drive(s), install Windows on its own fresh drive so it can have its own boot partition and its own bootloader, reconnect your Linux drive(s) after your Windows drive is finished setting up, and then set your Linux bootloader, usually GRUB, to query your Windows drive and let you pick it to boot from, that way hopefully Windows stays on its own drive and its own boot partition and doesn’t try to screw over your Linux drive and its boot partition.
What i half remember is that if the windows installer (or Linux installer for that matter) detects an EFI boot partition, it will write to it, regardless of what the software says it will do, which is why we have to do this.
But once windows is installed and grub uses the chainloader method to pass the boot to windows’s bootloader, does that mean that future windows updates will restrict their changes to the windows bootloader? Basically, what risks should I watch out for if Windows is on a drive in the same computer as linux?
I have tried to have separate computers share the same desk, speakers, keyboard, mouse, and dual monitors in the past, but it is not easy or cheap to do well :/
GRUB just queries it so you can pick it and boot from it, it should still be on its own drive if you do as I described with it, or at least it did last time I dual-booted, which was forever ago.
As others has stated, what game is it? Depending on the answer you might not need to install Windows after all.
If you want to dual-boot Windows and Linux, I strongly recommend that you install them on separate devices, and physically disconnect your Linux device. It’s a pain in the ass, but Windows Update has a particular appetite for bootloaders and will eventually eat whatever you have on your EFI partition (including the Linux kernel and ramdisk) and replace it with its own.
Otherwise, you can use Chris Titus’ winutil script to delay or completely disable updates, and also to debloat the system and disable anti-features like telemetry and the start menu search.
Not sure if this applies to LTSC, but if you can, install a European edition of Windows (-N suffix) and set an EU location and timezone, it will allow you to more easily uninstall components because of EU regulations.
Agreeing with others that grub on separate device from windows then just register windows boot in grub and point bios to grub.
Windows, for all its fuckery, doesn’t screw with that of which it has no awareness.
I physically disconnected all drives to force the EFI partition on the actual Windows drive. It still shat all over boot settings after the first major update.
Someone recommended I try rEFInd and it’s been great. No update has forced me back into the UEFI to set boot order since.
Might be an ASUS MB thing, I never figured it out or bothered afterwards.
There are interfaces that allow a sufficiently privileged process to change EFI settings from the OS. Those settings are stored in the UEFI chipset, independent from the bootloader.
I know it is probably not the same guy who put his whole show up on YouTube to watch for free during pandemic but it is goodwill nonetheless.
I can confirm you only need to physically disconnect the non-windows target drive during installation, and as long as you offline the remaining drives after connecting them, windows and other drives will be fine with updates (THIS is the most important part, do it in Disk Management on first boot into windows).
I’ve run two Windows instances for years, through multiple OS major updates and never had problems with this setup, before doing the offline drive change to each of them, they would both fuck over each other (I had one for work and one for personal).
One thing I did that may be necessary, is I didn’t let a boot loader handle the dual boot, I only used BIOS to manage changing the boot target when switching over - I was doing dual windows boots at the time so this may actually be fine with grub, so ymmv on that front.
LTSC is fine, and you can just use massgrave.dev to activate it.
Get the Windows 11 IoT LTSC specifically. IoT is better according to nassgrave, and Windows 11 so you get good compatibility with new games. Not much debloating is needed, just use WinUtil by CTT and tweak/disable shit.
If you want to install Windows on another drive and quite rightly don’t want to pay MS for the privilege, then massgrave is your friend.
Put the installer on a USB, remove your Linux drive (because you should install it on a separate drive, and Microsoft will infect your boot partition otherwise), and run it. That’s it.
Then follow the instructions on massgrave to activate it.
I’ve had Windows cause enough problems with wrecking my Linux boot partition to not want to try this again. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. It works fine most of the time. But I’m not willing to risk that rare occasion when windows renders my Linux drive unbootable. Maybe there’s a way to fix the boot partition and I haven’t figured it out. But restoring my whole system is so annoying that I wouldn’t risk it.
So i would recommend that the best option is to consider just ignoring that game and playing the endless number of great games out there that run on Linux already.
I was recommended rEFInd and it’s worked wonders. Never had another boot issue since, and I did like you: physically disconnected all drives except the one I wanted Windows on. Still messed up my boot settings.
Recommend you give it a try if you dare go again.
I have a windows install on a USB hard-drive. It’s not fast but that might not be a problem if you use a fast USB storage. I just plug it in and boot from it via UEFI.
This is what I do, just a spare nvme drive thrown in an external enclosure. Rufus has an option called “windows to go” that installs the iso as opposed to making a bootable installer, and it gives an option to block Windows from overwriting local disks to avoid the boot loader issues too. Has worked quite well up until a point recently where it just refused to boot anymore with an unhelpful error despite not having been touched in months. No updates or changes since it worked before. Good ol windows…
just a spare nvme drive thrown in an external enclosure
A spare NVME? In this economy?
Probably from the previous economy
Hah, I had written then deleted a part because the comment was already pretty long saying it almost has the same energy as “my spare yacht” at the moment. Reaaaally glad I had the foresight/luck with timing I did on keeping components around. Can’t wait for some bubbles to burst
You can do one of three, for different levels of ease and performance:
- Install boxes/gnome-boxes, install the windows os on a virtual machine. Just press the plus to choose an iso file and go.
- If you have an extra hard drive, you can install windows on that hard drive, and have to set up grub to recognise it.
- Change the partition size of your hd using a live cd/usb version of Linux (you can’t change partition size on partitions that are in use) , make a new partition and install windows on that partition. Add this new OS to grub.
You will need to do further research on some of the stuff I said, but I gave you the correct things to look up.
They go down in order of difficulty. Boxes will be less efficient but easiest. The other two have the same efficiency, but the second is a bit more challenging
I am not an expert on Windows game rootkits (or Windows in general…), but would it perhaps run in a VM?
At least then you wouldn’t have to do a “real” install…Nah, that used to be a solution a few years back if you had the patience to setup GPU-passthrough with a single or two GPUs. But these anticheat rootkits now detect a running VM and deny you service either way.
Dualbooting Windows 10 LTSC with massgrave activation seems to be the best option for now if you really nee…want a Windows installation with GPU acceleration. For Nongaming/Rendering tasks: Winboat.
Ugh, I feel you on this. Can’t help unfortunately because I just bit the bullet and dual boot, there’s just one or two games that don’t work well for me on Linux. Best of luck
There’s no such thing? You’ll have to install windows just like you installed Linux. I’m confused how you got Linux on your machine yet you’re asking this question-did someone else install it for you? If so, best to not mess around with repartitioning your drive. High likelihood of you screwing up your boot partition. Best to jam in another hard drive, unplug your Linux drive and go to town. Or heck, do what you want and learn :) breaking things is the best way to learn…
Just please back up all your files before you go crazy. You can’t permanently damage or break anything on your computer, but you CAN permanently delete files you cared about :)
To be honest, installing linux the firat time was a real disaster back in 2006. I had to learn how to use the virtual terminal, run some terminal commands, and handwrite an xorg config file just to get a gui.
Since then installing linux has gotten pretty easy. I’m comfortable repartitioning, backing up data, etc., and a lot of those skills were developes by working through guides and learning as I went.
I’m non knowlegeable or comfortable about
- Sourcing and activating windows LTSC (will try massgrave)
- EFI boot sector (will disconnect all other drives while installing windows)
I also don’t know what I don’t know. But installing windows as a dual boot option has got to be common enough that a guide exists, right?
I’m not sure why my prior comment is getting downvoted, people are weird on the internet. I was confused because you need some level of expertise to install Linux or any operating system for that matter - ie it’s not something my grandma or my parents can do… your questions seem overly cautious (probably not a bad thing)
I think you’re fine based on what you say you’re comfortable with. You totally can install windows right on your existing drive, but people have been having issues doing that (no fault of their own). First, you’d have to shrink your Linux partitions - this is a little tricker than just straight up nuking a drive and repartitioning. Many Linux installers can do this for you on a drive running windows, I don’t believe the windows installer can do it the other way around (at least not with a pretty gui that’s right in your face when installing windows). So you’d kind of be doing it backwards - usually you’d install windows and then let linux fix it all up nice nice. The other problem is that people don’t trust Microsoft software to do this these days. There’s been issues with windows taking over the boot partitions and making the Linux partition unbootable. This is why so many people recommend dual physical drives when dual booting - windows does its thing “over there” and Linux does its thing “over here”. Worst case it’s malicious, best case, the errors in the past have been Microsoft incompetence.
First choice? Get the game working in Linux - but it sounds like that’s just not going to be an option and you’ve researched that.
2nd choice: I’d use two drives, one with windows and one with Linux. Also the most expensive and if the only thing you do on the windows drive is play that one game - kind of a huge waste of a resource. But easiest least risky setup from both a “oops I screwed up the install” and a “windows is playing nice in the sandbox”
3rd choice? Dual boot off a single hard drive. If I were doing it, I’d probably nuke the whole drive after a backup, and make all the final partitions. Then I’d install windows and make sure it landed where it was supposed to. Then I’d install Linux.
Last choice? I’d try to resize the existing partitions and install Linux. I would definitely find a guide for that and follow it, (sorry I don’t know of one to recommend but I’m sure there’s plenty of good ones). My guess is you’ll end up back at 3rd choice ;)
And I’ll reiterate my prior point - good time for a solid backup! :)
Good luck! You’ll be fine :)
