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Can I dual boot windows and Linux?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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No one mentioned this yet, but a possible issue is that Windows, for some damn reason, still creates a 100MiB EFI partition, although by EFI spec It should be at least 256 iirc
This can cause the /boot/EFI partition to fill up. Some distros/bootloader are more affected than others, but I've had it happen a couple of times
So that’s why Fedora is complaining about running out of space on
/boot/efi!Can you elaborate a bit. I don't understand the connection between the undersized Windows partition and the problem with a distro. Also is the fix to manually increase the size of that partition?
The connection is that while the "system drive" (
C:\in Windows,/in Linux) for each system has its own partition, the EFI partition is shared. This is the partition where the files needed to load the respective OSes live, aka the entries you see in the bootloader. You could create a new EFI partition and tell Linux to use that one, but then you would have to select the OS from the boot devices in the BIOS, so no one does that.Well, yes, but the problem is that it's at the start of the drive, usually. That means you can not expand it without moving the main Windows partition, which is a pretty bad idea (terrible on HDDs) as it's prone to data loss. If your OEM put it at the end then you're very lucky and it's a quick operation, although it might require to delete some OEM-specific partition (which only serves to give you the branded wallpapers and bloatware if you factory reset from within Windows)
Honestly, if you don't distrohop this shouldn't be a problem. I had to do a stupid installation dance to have a 500MiB EFI partition, but I was motivated to do it because:
Ok. Thanks.