Dear all,
initially, I intended to install a Linux / Window dual boot on my system.
But: My machine simply “sees” only one Partition for booting, the others exist, but are not accessible for booting.
In other words: I ended up with a Linux only system.
My BIOS is "American Megatrends blended by Fujitsu.
My question is: Does it make sese to create a calc list showing as many Bios and computer models and indicating, which of them are prepared for dual boot (i.e. User sees two or more partitions during boot process and is able to chose, form which one he or she wants to boot?
Maybe such a list already exists in the internet? Where?
Thank you for any comments and help.
Best whishes.
Friendlyman
Hi,
Most BIOSes can handle dual boot just fine. Dual boot failures are usually not a BIOS issue but either a software/installer error or a user error.
I never even saw a complete and reliable list of Linux compatible hardware. IMHO, it would be a gargantuan task and the lists would need to be constantly and regularly updated, a full time job basically considering the number of hardware out there, to included new hardware and new BIOS revisions to be useful.
The closest I saw is this one: https://linux-hardware.org/
Besides, who’s gonna do this? It would require time, money and effort to test hardware or to run telemetry in a community that opposes any sort of telemetry on principle 
Voluntary submissions are the only way and that is never going to be complete and entirely reliable.
My fav way to dual boot is to have physically separate drives. It never failed me. I don’t let Linux touch the Windows disk and if I mess up the Linux installation I can just wipe it without affecting the Windows disk and use the BIOS boot menu to select my boot disks. But yeah, this won’t work with most laptops. However, just for testing, you can install Linux on an external USB SSD and it will usually work.
This is partially because I don’t feel skilled enough to mess around with GRUB and EFI. But issue like yours may be fixable actually. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable will come along and offer a solution.
2 Likes
any such list would become obsolite the moment it was published.
most bios support dual boot just fine… if you are having trouble, it’s likely due to legacy vs UEFI issues or a botched install.
might be repairable or might require reinstall, hard to say without more info.