How to Dual Boot Manjaro Linux with Windows 10
This article demonstrates the Manjaro Linux dual boot process with the Windows 10 operating system for Linux beginners. The guide provides details on required BIOS settings, Windows disk partition process and walks you through the step-by-step procedure to install Manjaro 20.2.1 Nibia release with a KDE-plasma desktop environment.
Note: The guide is UEFI installation-specific, and UEFI must not be mixed with the MBR partition scheme.
Getting Started
Before getting started, identify the firmware as an EFI/GPT system, as it controls kernel interaction with the hardware. Such as the Linux bootloader GRUB installs to GPT media constituting the OS. Make sure the machine meets the requirements of a disabled legacy boot and fast start-up. Follow the below instructions to disable them:
- Go to Update and Recovery -> Recover -> Advanced troubleshoot -> Restart -> Troubleshoot -> UEFI Settings -> Restart enter BIOS and disable BIOS/MBR and secure boot.
- Press Start, search for Power Options -> Choose what power buttons do->Change settings currently unavailable-> Uncheck Turn on fast startup.
Windows Disk Partition
To install Manjaro on the same hard drive as Windows 10. Make sure to create a separate Manjaro partition. In most cases, Windows 10 occupies the whole hard disk; however, it has an ideal tool to release space.
Click the Windows Start button and search Disk Management. A screen will appear listing all the partitions. Check the unallocated space, if any, and if it meets the minimum 30 GB Manjaro Linux HDD requirement. If not, right-click partition, and select ‘Shrink Volume’ to create a raw partition.
In the new screen, enter the Manjaro partition size in MBs and click shrink to begin Windows resizing.
Dual-Boot Manjaro with Windows 10
Plugin the Manjaro bootable device in the USB port, reboot the machine, and press the F11, F2, F12, or Esc key to enter the boot screen and begin the installation process. Every machine has a different key to enter the boot screen search online to figure this out for your laptop.
As soon as the installation media gets identified, it launches a welcome screen. Use arrow keys to choose the “boot with open-source drivers” option.
It will launch into a graphical interface known as Calamares. Click on the Launch Installer.
Select the Language and click Next.
Select the Time Zone and click Next.
Similarly, choose the default Keyboard layout to go to the disk partitioning screen.
In the partitioning screen, choose manual partitioning and click Next to avoid messing with the Windows partition.
Choose the free space partition and click Create to initiate building new partitions for Manjaro Linux.
EFI Partition:
Create a 512 MiB size EFI System Partition (ESP) to store files for the boot process and allow interoperability within operating systems. Create the mount point at /boot/efi and select FAT32 filesystem.
SWAP Partition:
Setting up a little swap partition is way better than none. The size depends on the system, available RAM, and disk. However, official Manjaro documentation recommends setting the swap partition equal to the RAM size and a minimum of 8 GB if the RAM size exceeds 8 GB.
Select the unpartitioned or available free space to create a swap partition of size 10 GB, choose the filesystem linuxswap, and make sure to select the swap Flag.
We will now create separate partitions for the home and root directory. Even though it’s not recommended to create separate partitions, it’s another advantage of manual partitioning.
Home Partition:
Creating a separate home partition allows to separate personal data and maintain the system. Select the remaining free space to assign 80 GB HDD to the /home directory. Choose ext4 filesystem and select /home as the mounting space.
The disadvantage of a separate home partition is that it leaves little room for the root partition.
Root Partition:
Now select the remaining free space to create the / (root) partition. Creating a root partition of the minimum suggested size requires the user to perform routine system maintenance. The maintenance will avoid the disk from running full and hence easy to boot.
Choose the unallocated space to create the root partition. The recommended available disk partition space must be between 20-64 GB. Select ext4 filesystem, /(root) as mount point, and click “OK.”
Or, it’s also possible to not create manual partitions for home, swap, efi, and root. Instead, utilize all the unallocated space available for a ‘root partition.
As in this scenario, utilize all the 117.9 GB of available free space in the beginning to create a single root partition. Select the filesystem ext4, choose the / mount point, and select root flag. The Manjaro installation process will take care of the rest of the grub files and folder.
Next up, add Manjaro user credentials such as username, hostname, and root password.
Click ‘Next’ to choose the preferred office suite or select ‘no office suite.’
Lastly, review all the selected changes before the installation procedure begins. Ensure all the changes are as per your preferences, especially hard disk partition, as Manjaro writes them to the disk. Once done, click ‘Install.’
Check BootOrder
After installation, do not reboot the system. Use Ctrl+Alt+T to open the terminal and enter the efibootmgr command to verify the boot order.
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0004,0003, 2001 , 2003 , 2002
Boot0000 * EFI Network 0 for IPv4 ( FC- 45 — 96 — 41 -BD- 27 )
Boot0001 * EFI Network 0 for IPv6 ( FC- 45 — 96 — 41 -BD- 27 )
Boot0002 * EFI USB Device ( KingstonDataTraveler 3.0 )
Boot0003 * Windows Boot Manager
Boot2001 * EFI USB Device
Boot2002 * EFI DVD / CDROM
Boot2003 * EFI Network
The above command outputs the Manjaro entry with its corresponding boot number as the boot order’s first entry.
If there is no Manjaro boot entry and it isn’t listed at the top of the boot order, run the following commands. Let’s assume the root and esp partitions are sda4 and sda5 and run the following commands:
] $ sudo mount / dev / sda4 / mnt
] $ sudo mount / dev / sda5 / mnt / boot / efi
] $ sudo cp / mnt / boot / grub / x86_64-efi / core.efi / mnt / boot / efi / EFI / boot / bootx64.efi
] $ sudo efibootmgr -c -d / dev / sda -p 2 -L "manjaro" -l "\EFI\Manjaro\grubx64.efi"
Re-run the efibootmgr command to confirm if Manjaro tops the boot order. If not, the system may have UEFI setup issues.
Conclusion
The article is a one-stop guide for Linux beginners who want to dual boot Manjaro with Windows 10 operating system. The guide covers prerequisites to dual boot Manjaro and provides an in-detail installation guide. We also cover troubleshooting boot orders to ensure that Manjaro corresponding number tops the boot order.
About the author
Usama Azad
A security enthusiast who loves Terminal and Open Source. My area of expertise is Python, Linux (Debian), Bash, Penetration testing, and Firewalls. I’m born and raised in Wazirabad, Pakistan and currently doing Undergraduation from National University of Science and Technology (NUST). On Twitter i go by @UsamaAzad14
Manjaro #1: Dual-boot Windows 10 / ArchLinux
How to install an ArchLinux distribution alongside a pre-installed Windows 10 system (or any Linux distribution!)
Tech notes and Geek stuff
See also:
- Manjaro #2: system and drivers
- Manjaro #3: how to customize XFCE desktop
Step 1: Windows
Shrink one of your partitions to create diskspace for Linux (100 Gb). Use the “Disk Management” tool on Windows, right click on the partition which you want to shrink, and choose “Shrink Volume”. Type a number how much disk space you want to free up, in Mb (ie 100 000 Mb).
Download the ISO of the Linux distro you want to install. I chose Manjaro, in order to get an easy to use Archlinux system. Make sure the ISO contains Gparted, so you can modify your partitions in the USB live session.
Make a bootable USB with the Linux distro you downloaded. On windows you may use Rufus or similar tools. On Linux use the ‘dd’ command line, carefully.
dd if=/path/to/your/isofile of=/your/usb/disk
Prepare Windows to enter BIOS at next reboot: find the “Advance Startup Options” menu in Windows Settings, and select to reboot on BIOS and change UEFI settings. According to your PC, you may also press a function key at startup.
Enter the BIOS : on the “Security” tab, deactivate the Secure Boot option. On the boot options the USB key name should appear. Select to boot from USB in order to launch the Linux live session.
Step 2: Installing Linux
Paritions : once booted on the live distro, run Gparted (Manjaro live root password: manjaro) to make your partitions using the diskspace created on step 1.
These steps are not ‘Arch’ specific, use it to install any Linux distribution!
- A new Ext4 Linux partition: 96 Gb
- A Linux-Swap partition: 4 Gb
If you are UEFI, Windows already created an EFI boot partition, so your all set and ready to go. Shut down the pc and now run the Arch-Anywhere USB.
Installation: when the option appears on where to install, choose manual partitioning. Choose your new Ext4 for / (root/home) and linux-swap for swap. Format the Ext4 partition. You can format swap if no other Linux distro is installed. For UEFI select the already made EFI partition (usually the first listed, it should be a 100Mb fat32 partition) and the mount point will be /boot/efi.
DO NOT FORMAT the EFI partition or your other OS’s will not boot.
Finish the installation. On the next reboot, you’ll be greeted by GRUB. This screen will allow you to choose between starting Linux or Windows.
How to Dual-boot Manjaro 16.10, Windows 10 on a computer with UEFI firmware
Manjaro is a desktop Linux distribution that’s based on Arch Linux. In this article, you’ll learn how to install it alongside Windows 10 on a computer with UEFI firmware and a single hard drive. In other words, this article shows how to dual-boot Manjaro Linux and Windows 10 on a computer with UEFI firmware.
At the end, GRUB, the Manjaro boot manager/boot loader, will be the default boot manager of the computer, which will give you the option of booting into Manjaro or Windows 10 whenever you (re)boot the computer.
First Step – Get Your Windows 10 Computer Ready
1. For a pain-free and successful operation of the sort that, it is recommended that you disable Secure Boot. How this is done depends on your computer, but if you have the same Lenovo laptop I used for this tutorial, see How to disable Secure Boot on a Lenovo G50 laptop. On an HP 250 G5 laptop, see this guide.
2. From the BIOS or UEFI setup utility, configure the computer to boot from external media.
3. After that, you need to free up disk space from your computer by shrinking the C drive or other partition with enough free space on it. Getting that done is fairly simple by using the Windows 10 partition manager. When completed, the partition should show partitions and a free disk space similar to the one in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Free space recovered from Windows 10 C drive
Create a Bootable USB Stick of Manjaro
The next step in this operation is to download an installation image of the latest Manjaro Linux. The distribution comes in several desktop flavors, but for this article, I used an installation image of the KDE edition – Manjaro KDE 16.10. It and other desktop editions of the distribution are available for download at the project’s download page.
After the download has completed, you may now use it to create a bootable USB stick. To accomplish that on Windows 10, use this article as a guide. On any Linux distribution, the simplest method is to use the following command:
In the next step, you’ll use that bootable USB stick to install your favorite desktop flavor of Manjaro alongside Windows 10.
Dual-boot Manjaro Linux With Windows 10
If you need to encrypt the Manjaro 16.10 side of this setup, see Disk encryption with Calamares, the Linux installer for assistance in using the installer’s disk encryption feature.
If you follow the steps as given here, you should have yourself a dual-boot system running your favorite desktop flavor of Manjaro Linux and Windows 10 in about 12 minutes. So if you’ve not done so already, insert the bootable USB stick you created in the previous step in a free USB port and reboot the computer. If it’s been configured in the BIOS or UEFI setup utility, it should boot into the USB stick. If it does not, access the computer’s boot menu and select the appropriate entry. In Figure 2, that entry is EFI USB Device (USB Flash Disk), and it should be the same on your computer.
Figure 2: Computer boot menu showing the boot options
Let the computer boot into the Manjaro Live desktop. While on there, launch Calamares, the distribution’s graphical installation program. The step after the first step, should look just like the one shown in Figure 2, which gives you several disk partitioning options.
Figure 2: Disk partitioning options of Calamares
The Replace a partition option will take any existing partition and repartition it for Manjaro. So if you select the free space that you recovered from your C drive, it will partition it for Manjaro. However, the installer will create just one partition if you select that option.
What we want to do here, is create three partitions, mounted at / (root), /home and swap. And the option that will make that possible is Manual partitioning.
Figure 3: Replace disk partitioning option of Calamares
So select it and click the Next button.
Figure 4: Manual disk partitioning option of Calamares
That will take you to the manual disk partitioning interface, where all existing partitions and the free space, will be listed. In Figure 5, partitions 1 to 4 are the Windows 10 partitions. Though it’s not indicated as such, partition 2 (/dev/sdb2), is the EFI System Partition (ESP). That’s where Windows 10’s boot loader is installed, and where GRUB, the (Manjaro) Linux boot loader, will also be installed. To start creating partitions, select the free space as shown in Figure 5, then click the Create button. That procedure has to be repeated for all the partitions you’ll be creating.
Figure 5: Manual disk partitioning interface of Calamares
That should open the installer’s partition editing window, shown in Figure 6. The only options we’ll need to modify are Size, File System, and Mount Point. For the root and /home partitions, we’ll be using the default file system, so there will no need to modify that when creating those partitions. Note that the installer does have support for disk encryption, but for this setup, we’ll not be using that feature.
Figure 6: Disk partition editor of Calamares
The first partition we’ll be creating will be mounted at /, and you can assign from 20,000 MB (20 GB) to 50.000 MB (50 GB) to it. A default installation of Manjaro 16.10 KDE takes up less than 7 GB of disk space, so if you don’t have that much free disk space to spare, less will do, provided it’s not less than 7 GB. For the File System option, leave it at ext4. Click OK when you’re finished setting the options.
Figure 7: Creating root partition for Manjaro 16.10 on Calamares
For the next partition, which will be mounted at /home, assign as much disk space as you can afford to spare, and leave the File System at the default. OK.
Figure 8: Creating home partition for Manjaro 16.10 on Calamares
The last partition will be for swap, disk space that the system may use as (virtual) memory. From Use as, select linuxswap, then assign some disk space to it. About 2000 MB (2GB) to 4000 MB (4 GB) should do. Less if you don’t have that much disk space to spare. OK.
Figure 9: Creating swap partition for Manjaro 16.10 on Calamares
Back to the manual partitioning window for the last time, the partitions you just created will be listed under the existing (Windows 10) partitions. One last task that needs to be completed here before moving to the next step, is specify the ESP. That should be /dev/sdb2, so click on it.
Figure 10: Complete partitions for Manjaro 16.10 on Calamares
In the partition editor’s window that opens, set the Mount Point to /boot/efi, then click OK. Do not modify any other option in this window.
Figure 11: Configure System EFI partition for dual-booting Windows 10 and Manjaro 16.10
All should now be set, and you may click Next.
Figure 12: Completed System EFI partition for dual-booting Windows 10 and Manjaro 16.10
This shows you a summary of all the tasks the installer is going to perform. If you agree, click Next.
Figure 13: Summary of installation options for dual-booting Windows 10 and Manjaro 16.10
Boot Into Your New Dual-boot System And Update GRUB
After installation has completed, attempting to reboot into your new dual-boot system will first take you to the GRUB menu, which will be just like the one in Figure 14. Notice that there’s no entry for the Windows 10 boot manager, so it won’t be possible to boot into Windows 10 from here.
Figure 14: GRUB menu of Manjaro after installing Manjaro alongside Windows 10
We’ll correct that in a moment. Right now, boot into your new installation of Manjaro. Once logged in, open the terminal application, then type sudo update-grub. The output should match that shown below.
After that, rebooting the computer will show a GRUB boot manager interface with an entry for Windows 10, besides the entries for Manjaro Linux. And GRUB will still remain the default boot manager. After making sure that you can still boot into Manjaro, boot into Windows 10 also. If you did all as specified in this article, you should be able to boot into both systems. Enjoy your dual-boot system running Manjaro 16.10 and Windows 10.
Figure 15: GRUB menu of Manjaro after updating GRUB on a dual-boot system between Manjaro and Windows 10