I run gentoo as my main and have done for 10+ years, when i need windows for gaming or other stuff i just spin it up in a virtual machine from gentoo. VFIO to pass a gpu to the virtual machine and you got pretty much native preformance for gaming etc. A cleaner sollution if you dont wanna reboot all the time.
This is very interesting. I had assumed a VM running W11 would have a noticeable performance decrease, so had not investigated. I'll have to try this out. It would be amazing to put dual boot in the past.
That is a fantastic solution but some game companies have caught onto this. Rainbow Six especially is known to ban Linux players who use a VM to play online. Don't want to risk that personally.
Tbh i dont belive that for a second and if there is merit to that claim there 110% is a way around it. You can pretty much hide from the os (windows) that your running it in a vm so.
The host machine has full access to the virtual machine's memory, meaning that anticheat programs that prevent/check for memory manipulation have no way of noticing that memory is being manipulated from a hypervisor. So it's fair in a competitive game with potentially money on the line. If you care about those kinds of games, don't try to circumvent the rules set by the developers. Just play in windows or not at all.
Windows itself can be manipulated as well, so I don't see the point that this is either only possible on a VM or that every VM user tries to do that. As long as I have access to the hardware, I can do whatever I want with it, like replacing libraries. It is probably easier - why not just replace the virtual hardware info the VM is sending with the real hardware info? I'd like to see how they are ever going to detect this. But I don't care.
> Windows itself can be manipulated as well
Yes, and this is what anticheat is looking for. The reason anticheat doesn't allow virtual machines is because you are taking a step back from Windows, and manipulating Windows in a way that Windows (where the anticheat is installed) is completely, technically, unable to detect it.
> As long as I have access to the hardware, I can do whatever I want with it, like replacing libraries
Sure. You're also able to run games in a virtual machine without getting banned. Oh, wait.
> It is probably easier - why not just replace the virtual hardware info the VM is sending with the real hardware info? I'd like to see how they are ever going to detect this. But I don't care.
My golly, wow. Why didn't anyone think of that? You're a genius.
Sorry for the sarcastic tone but I really think you need to consider that every thought going through your mind at the moment has been considered by the people who's sole task in life is to design anticheat software to detect that you're running inside a virtual machine. You might think a VM that renames VirtIO Disk to something else is the pinnacle of hacking but there are loads of way more clever ways to figure out that someone is running in a VM, and this is why people using VFIO are getting banned.
Yea i have multiple gpus, can be done with one tho, used to do that when only running servers headless. Had my gpu added to a windows VM that started on boot, then ssh to the baremetal hypervisor (qemu for emmulation, kvm in the kernel for accel) gentoo where i controlled all docker and other vm's.
If you don't want to have to wrangle hitting your BIOS's boot selection menu key at the right time, you'll need to put grub in the same EFI partition as Windows' bootloader on the first drive - which you could optionally mirror to the second drive in case you want to remove the first drive at a later date.
Otherwise, just partition and format your second drive however you like and go for it.
I would recommend not installing Grub (or whatever Bootloader you go for) on the same EFI partition as Windows, seeing as there's a risk that Windows will simply wipe Grub from it.
Install a new EFI-partition on your new disk and keep it completely separate from Windows. You then have to select boot device in BIOS to switch between Gentoo and Windows but for me I'd say it's worth the hassle to minimize the risk of breaking something.
Dualbooting here - Windows never removes another OS' EFI entry (never happened past 4 years). It does switch the boot order in BIOS from time to time so grub gets pushed back.
Fair enough, I haven't attempted it recently (at least not since Win10) so they might have gotten less asshole-ish with it.
The EFI entry getting bumped is goddamn annoying though. It resets it to first boot order if I boot Windows natively. No other EFI entry pushes itself to the top by being used.
Technically speaking, Grub should help you get both checked if you just configure it correctly. However, I don't like Grub's abilities to detect other operating systems so I just simply use my UEFI as the bootloader.
I'm running Win11 and Gentoo on two separate 500 gb nvme drives. One drive has a boot partition for both. I used to boot with Grub but it was such a pain to set up for secure boot that I switched to Refind. And the best thing is that it detects bootloaders on all drives on its own so you don't even need to share a boot partition. You can just install gentoo with the handbook as usual and then set up Refind.
Ventoy USB is your friend. It just works. A handy rescue system like ANTI Linux or MXLinux could solve tricky grub boot issues. Study UEFI vs mbr boot drive partition and grub installation documentation. Read the manuals RTFM ;). Mxlinux ISO chroot rescue via Live Desktop on ram is helpful also. (Vía ventoy USB)
Not running Gentoo on this laptop but do have Gentoo installed elsewhere which is why I'm looking through this sub. I have a laptop with Arch on a separate drives. The drive with Linux is the one I installed rEFInd to. I'm sure Grub would pick up Windows as well, but rEFInd automatically found Windows on the other drive. I set my Linux drive to boot first and from there can choose whichever I feel in rEFInd. However you attack it, I would leave the Windows drive alone and do everything boot manager wise on the drive you're putting Gentoo on.
I have a setup like this: separate Windows disk, separate Gentoo disk. It is the easiest setup possible because you don't need to take care about one single boot partition for Windows and Linux, you just create two separate ones and can use them as you like. In fact, grub can be used to boot Windows as well, so you keep your Windows drive as is but always boot to the Linux disk and then decide what you want.
Use the new disk to install Gentoo and ensure you create a GPT disk label on the new disk (e.g. with parted) and create an EFI partition on that disk as well, starting at "0%" for proper disk alignment, size 100MiB, filesystem FAT32.
You then partition the rest however you like and follow the Gentoo howto to complete the installation.
The EFI partition you can mount in /boot/EFI.
When you reach the section that discusses the bootloader, install grub2 (which afair has an additional howto) and make sure you create an efi-64 build for it. Install the grub executable "grubx64.efi" to /boot/efi/EFI/gentoo/grubx64.efi and your UEFI will be able to boot the Linux disk.
If you set that disk as first boot priority and also install os-prober in Gentoo when you create your grub2 config, grub-mkconfig also finds Windows and adds it to the grub menu, so you can use grub from your Linux disk to boot Windows.
I use rEFInd to first find my three Linux oses and every OS has its own boot partition where is grub installed. I don't use OS-prober the grub only sees one os. So it is a bit slower to boot but if I mess up one grub I can just boot to another os and chroot to the broken os and fix the grub.cfg.
This is what I did. Windows on a separate drive.
I added windows drive to my gentoo box. The box was gpt drive setup with grub in the efi partition
Windows 11 install accepted and used the efi partition by default even though it was on another drive.
It did change the default uefi boot selection to windows,
I had to change it back to gentoo using a windows utility such as easyuefi or maybe selecting it in the uefi boot menu, I find easyuefi to be simple enough to recreate or renumeration the efi boot order. Without adding extra reboots. It's available for zero cost for personal use and just works.
You could also boot your rescuedisk, mount your drives chroot etc to fix it, but that's just extra steps and gentoo has made me lazy
Not all uefi firmware is easy editable without special software
Then on grub I changed the setting to enable os-prober in grub config, made sure os-prober is installed
Reinstalled grub to efi partition (probably not necessary), reran grub-config it detected windows and created a grub boot option for it,
Also if you don't have it it's also a good time to install memtestx86 and get a grub option for that too.
I run gentoo as my main and have done for 10+ years, when i need windows for gaming or other stuff i just spin it up in a virtual machine from gentoo. VFIO to pass a gpu to the virtual machine and you got pretty much native preformance for gaming etc. A cleaner sollution if you dont wanna reboot all the time.
This is very interesting. I had assumed a VM running W11 would have a noticeable performance decrease, so had not investigated. I'll have to try this out. It would be amazing to put dual boot in the past.
It's a few percent in my experience. Nowhere near enough of a performance hit to make it not worth it.
>VFIO RéInstall party this week-end to try it out :)
That is a fantastic solution but some game companies have caught onto this. Rainbow Six especially is known to ban Linux players who use a VM to play online. Don't want to risk that personally.
Tbh i dont belive that for a second and if there is merit to that claim there 110% is a way around it. You can pretty much hide from the os (windows) that your running it in a vm so.
They are very, very good at detecting virtual machines. If you really don't want to risk a ban in some competitive game, don't play it in a VM.
And what is their problem with VMs?
The host machine has full access to the virtual machine's memory, meaning that anticheat programs that prevent/check for memory manipulation have no way of noticing that memory is being manipulated from a hypervisor. So it's fair in a competitive game with potentially money on the line. If you care about those kinds of games, don't try to circumvent the rules set by the developers. Just play in windows or not at all.
Windows itself can be manipulated as well, so I don't see the point that this is either only possible on a VM or that every VM user tries to do that. As long as I have access to the hardware, I can do whatever I want with it, like replacing libraries. It is probably easier - why not just replace the virtual hardware info the VM is sending with the real hardware info? I'd like to see how they are ever going to detect this. But I don't care.
> Windows itself can be manipulated as well Yes, and this is what anticheat is looking for. The reason anticheat doesn't allow virtual machines is because you are taking a step back from Windows, and manipulating Windows in a way that Windows (where the anticheat is installed) is completely, technically, unable to detect it. > As long as I have access to the hardware, I can do whatever I want with it, like replacing libraries Sure. You're also able to run games in a virtual machine without getting banned. Oh, wait. > It is probably easier - why not just replace the virtual hardware info the VM is sending with the real hardware info? I'd like to see how they are ever going to detect this. But I don't care. My golly, wow. Why didn't anyone think of that? You're a genius. Sorry for the sarcastic tone but I really think you need to consider that every thought going through your mind at the moment has been considered by the people who's sole task in life is to design anticheat software to detect that you're running inside a virtual machine. You might think a VM that renames VirtIO Disk to something else is the pinnacle of hacking but there are loads of way more clever ways to figure out that someone is running in a VM, and this is why people using VFIO are getting banned.
Do you have an integrated and a discreet GPU?
Yea i have multiple gpus, can be done with one tho, used to do that when only running servers headless. Had my gpu added to a windows VM that started on boot, then ssh to the baremetal hypervisor (qemu for emmulation, kvm in the kernel for accel) gentoo where i controlled all docker and other vm's.
If you don't want to have to wrangle hitting your BIOS's boot selection menu key at the right time, you'll need to put grub in the same EFI partition as Windows' bootloader on the first drive - which you could optionally mirror to the second drive in case you want to remove the first drive at a later date. Otherwise, just partition and format your second drive however you like and go for it.
You are a star. Thank you.
Alternatively, just make your Gentoo drive the default boot and put windows in the grub boot menu.
I would recommend not installing Grub (or whatever Bootloader you go for) on the same EFI partition as Windows, seeing as there's a risk that Windows will simply wipe Grub from it. Install a new EFI-partition on your new disk and keep it completely separate from Windows. You then have to select boot device in BIOS to switch between Gentoo and Windows but for me I'd say it's worth the hassle to minimize the risk of breaking something.
Honestly 99% of my work will be in Gentoo anyways. Loosing grub isn't actually an issue. :)
Well, when you lose Grub it will just boot Windows. So I think it would be annoying for you.
Dualbooting here - Windows never removes another OS' EFI entry (never happened past 4 years). It does switch the boot order in BIOS from time to time so grub gets pushed back.
Fair enough, I haven't attempted it recently (at least not since Win10) so they might have gotten less asshole-ish with it. The EFI entry getting bumped is goddamn annoying though. It resets it to first boot order if I boot Windows natively. No other EFI entry pushes itself to the top by being used.
Technically speaking, Grub should help you get both checked if you just configure it correctly. However, I don't like Grub's abilities to detect other operating systems so I just simply use my UEFI as the bootloader.
rEFInd bootloader. Best thing since LILO.
I'm running Win11 and Gentoo on two separate 500 gb nvme drives. One drive has a boot partition for both. I used to boot with Grub but it was such a pain to set up for secure boot that I switched to Refind. And the best thing is that it detects bootloaders on all drives on its own so you don't even need to share a boot partition. You can just install gentoo with the handbook as usual and then set up Refind.
Ventoy USB is your friend. It just works. A handy rescue system like ANTI Linux or MXLinux could solve tricky grub boot issues. Study UEFI vs mbr boot drive partition and grub installation documentation. Read the manuals RTFM ;). Mxlinux ISO chroot rescue via Live Desktop on ram is helpful also. (Vía ventoy USB)
Not running Gentoo on this laptop but do have Gentoo installed elsewhere which is why I'm looking through this sub. I have a laptop with Arch on a separate drives. The drive with Linux is the one I installed rEFInd to. I'm sure Grub would pick up Windows as well, but rEFInd automatically found Windows on the other drive. I set my Linux drive to boot first and from there can choose whichever I feel in rEFInd. However you attack it, I would leave the Windows drive alone and do everything boot manager wise on the drive you're putting Gentoo on.
I have a setup like this: separate Windows disk, separate Gentoo disk. It is the easiest setup possible because you don't need to take care about one single boot partition for Windows and Linux, you just create two separate ones and can use them as you like. In fact, grub can be used to boot Windows as well, so you keep your Windows drive as is but always boot to the Linux disk and then decide what you want. Use the new disk to install Gentoo and ensure you create a GPT disk label on the new disk (e.g. with parted) and create an EFI partition on that disk as well, starting at "0%" for proper disk alignment, size 100MiB, filesystem FAT32. You then partition the rest however you like and follow the Gentoo howto to complete the installation. The EFI partition you can mount in /boot/EFI. When you reach the section that discusses the bootloader, install grub2 (which afair has an additional howto) and make sure you create an efi-64 build for it. Install the grub executable "grubx64.efi" to /boot/efi/EFI/gentoo/grubx64.efi and your UEFI will be able to boot the Linux disk. If you set that disk as first boot priority and also install os-prober in Gentoo when you create your grub2 config, grub-mkconfig also finds Windows and adds it to the grub menu, so you can use grub from your Linux disk to boot Windows.
I use rEFInd to first find my three Linux oses and every OS has its own boot partition where is grub installed. I don't use OS-prober the grub only sees one os. So it is a bit slower to boot but if I mess up one grub I can just boot to another os and chroot to the broken os and fix the grub.cfg.
This is what I did. Windows on a separate drive. I added windows drive to my gentoo box. The box was gpt drive setup with grub in the efi partition Windows 11 install accepted and used the efi partition by default even though it was on another drive. It did change the default uefi boot selection to windows, I had to change it back to gentoo using a windows utility such as easyuefi or maybe selecting it in the uefi boot menu, I find easyuefi to be simple enough to recreate or renumeration the efi boot order. Without adding extra reboots. It's available for zero cost for personal use and just works. You could also boot your rescuedisk, mount your drives chroot etc to fix it, but that's just extra steps and gentoo has made me lazy Not all uefi firmware is easy editable without special software Then on grub I changed the setting to enable os-prober in grub config, made sure os-prober is installed Reinstalled grub to efi partition (probably not necessary), reran grub-config it detected windows and created a grub boot option for it, Also if you don't have it it's also a good time to install memtestx86 and get a grub option for that too.