So I have been distrohopping for some time and tested several distros in a vm. From everything I tested i think I like Fedora the most and I would like to install it, but there are a few programs that run only on windows that I need to use so I want to dual boot instead of wiping the drive and using only Fedora.
My question is, if I select automatic partitioning in the installer and select the option to shrink space from existing partition will that install Fedora only on the free space that I reclaimed from my windows partition or will it erase the whole drive? I am using one SSD. Windows 10 is installed as UEFI.
Make sure to use “shrink” rather than “delete” and it should do just what you want. It won’t delete anything you didn’t tell it to. Of course, make sure to back up anything important first. It’s unlikely to go wrong, but disks can fail at any time.
Personally, I think dual boot is not the best experience, and recommend instead switching things around and running windows in a VM — or with Wine, if possible. But if that’s not your preference this should work just fine.
Thank you. AFAIK Microsoft office doesn’t work with wine and I need 100% compatibility for work so I can’t use libre office. I will spend some time with Fedora and one day maybe I will delete windows and use it in VM for software that doesn’t work on Linux.
Just so you know, I use libre office without microsoft office and the files have always been 100% compatible as long as I save them in docx format. Possibly in some extreme edge cases that would not be true, but for me it has.
Dual booting has never been a problem for me, and moving windows to a vm would require a complete reinstall with the licensing headaches involved.
One caveat that you should be aware of. I find it a cleaner approach to do the file system shrink from within windows because there is less risk of error for windows to work with its own native file system.