Today I will walk you through the steps to dual boot Linux Mint with Windows 10. The version of Linux mint that I will be using is Linux Mint 20, which is the latest version of Linux Mint.
Before starting the installation process let’s see all the requirements you will need to fulfill to be able to install Mint.
Flash Drive (USB) – You will need a flash drive that has at least 10GB of storage, try to use an empty Flash drive to avoid any conflict.
Hard Disk – The hard disk on your computer must have at least 50GB of free space, this is to make sure that Linux mint runs properly. Besides, if you are going to use it a lot then you will need 50GB of space.
Stable Internet connection – You will need a stable internet connection to download Linux Mint and the flashing software.
Once you have all these things ready, you can now proceed to the installation.
Download Linux Mint
The first step for us will be to download the ISO file of Linux mint, to do that you can either search for “Download Linux Mint” on google or directly go to their official website at – https://linuxmint.com/download.php.
On the download page, you will need to select the edition of Linux Mint that you want, I will select the Cinnamon edition, as it is the most popular one. You can also select any edition of Linux mint you want, the installation process will remain the same. Click on download to continue.
You will be then redirected to the Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition page, where you will need to scroll down and find “Download Mirrors”, click on any of the mirrors that are closest to you.
Once you click on the mirror link, if you are using chrome or Firefox then you will get a popup asking you to either save the file or open it, click save file and your download will start.
Download BalenaEtcher
After downloading the Linux Mint ISO file, you will need to download BalenaEtcher, which is an open-source flashing tool to flash OS images on Flash drives and SD cards.
To download Etcher first go to their website at – https://www.balena.io/etcher/, here click on the Download for windows button, the website will automatically detect your OS, in case if it doesn’t then you can just use the down arrow on the right side of the download button and select the right version for your device.
Just click “save file” and save the setup.exe of Etcher.
Install Etcher
Once the etcher setup.exe is downloaded, double click on it to run the setup wizard of Etcher, first you will need to agree to the license by clicking “I Agree”. This will start the installation of Etcher which will take a little bit of time, once installed it will open automatically.
Flash Linux Mint ISO
Now once Etcher is installed you can now flash the downloaded Linux Mint ISO file to the Flash drive, to do that first open Etcher.
After that take your Flash drive and plug it in, now in etcher, you will need to click on “Flash from file”, this will open your file manager where you will need to select the downloaded Linux Mint ISO file, click on open to continue.
In “Select Target” you will need to select your Flash drive and after that click on “Flash!” to start the flashing process, you might get a popup from “Windows command processor” to allow something, just click yes and it will start the flashing.
The flashing process will take a few minutes depending upon the speed of your flash drive. Once done you will now have a bootable USB with Linux Mint that you can use on any device that you want.
NOTE: Sometimes you might get a popup asking you to erase your computer hard disk to be able to use it after flashing the USB, just close the popup and it will be fine.
Backup Windows (Optional)
Now before installing Linux Mint on your computer you might wanna create a backup of your system, just to be on the safer side if something goes wrong. This step is optional but it’s a good idea to create a backup.
There are lots of videos on youtube that show you how you can create a backup of your Windows computer to external storage and restore it. So, I would recommend you to check them out.
Once you have created a backup of your website, you can now start the installation of Linux Mint.
Boot into Linux Mint Live Mode from USB
Okay so once everything is ready you can now start the installation of Linux mint.
To do that, first, click on your Windows icon and click on “Restart”, now to install Linux mint we will need to enter the “Boot Menu”, I am using a Lenovo laptop so I will enter “F12” Rapidly during the restart to enter the Boot menu.
You can google how you can enter the boot menu on your device if it’s hp, Asus, Dell, or something else.
In the Boot Menu, you will need to select the “UEFI” option using your arrow keys, do make sure that the Flash drive is connected to the computer. Press enter in “UEFI” to enter the GNU GRUB.
Here in gnu grub, you will see multiple booting options, the one that you will need to select is the “Start Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon 64-bit”, if you are facing any problem when using that booting option then you can try the “Start Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon 64-bit (Compatibility Mode)”. Press enter to continue.
Once Linux Mint boots up, you will be in the live mode, which means that Linux mint is now running directly from your Flash Drive, now as we need a dual bootable computer where we can use both Linux Mint and windows, we will need to install Linux Mint instead of just running it on live mode.
Install Linux Mint
To Install Linux Mint, you will need to first click on the “Install Linux Mint ” icon at the home screen of the Live mode, double click on it to start the installation of Linux mint.
After clicking on the “Install Linux Mint” icon you will be asked to select your language, select it and click continue. In “Keyboard Layout” select your keyboard language and click continue.
In the next tab which is “Multimedia Codecs” you get an option to install the multimedia codecs required to play any video or audio in your Linux Mint, I recommend you to check it because sometimes you might need it, check the “Install Multimedia Codecs and click continue.
In the “Installation Type” tab you will need to select what kind of installation you want to do, there will be two options, first one is “Install Linux Mint alongside Windows Boot Manager” which is the one that we will select as we want a dual boot Linux Mint Installation.
The second option is “Erase Disk and Install Linux Mint” which will erase everything we have on our hard disk and install Linux Mint, this option is used when you want to just install one OS on your computer.
Select the “Install Linux Mint alongside Windows Boot Manager” option and click on continue
Now, after that in the “Install Linux Mint alongside Windows Boot Manager” tab, you will need to choose how much storage you want to allocate to Linux Mint, use the slider and drag it to allocate storage. I recommend allocating at least 50 GB of storage for Linux Mint.
Once the required storage is allocated, click on “Install Now”. You might get a popup asking to “write the changes to Disk”, click on continue. This will start the installation of Linux Mint in the background. You still have some things to set.
On the next tab select your time zone, after that you will have to now provide the login details and a few other things.
Enter your name, your computer name (name it anything), a short username, a short but secure password. After that keep the other things to default, you can select Log in automatically if you don’t want to enter a password for logging in.
The installation will take a few minutes to complete, so just sit back and relax till then, once the installation finishes it will ask you to restart the computer, just click on Restart now to restart.
It will ask you to remove your flash drive from the computer when it is restarting, so just remove your flash drive and click enter when asked, after that wait for it to automatically boot into Linux Mint, you don’t need to press anything.
Once your Linux Mint boots up, log in using your username and password, and check if everything is working perfectly or not. Things like the internet, apps, settings, etc.
Test Dual Booting
Now that Linux Mint is working on your computer, it’s now time to check whether Windows is working or not. First shut down your Linux Mint.
Now to Boot into Linux Mint or Windows 10 you will need to select whether you want to boot into Linux or Windows at the boot menu that you will get when starting your computer.
In the Boot menu if you want to boot into Linux Mint then select “Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon” and if you want to boot into Windows 10 then select “ Windows boot Manager”, select your OS and press enter to boot into that OS.
Boot into windows and check if all the things are working or not, check your hard drive to see if you accidentally didn’t delete everything stored there or something.
And, that’s it, that is how you can create a dual boot flash drive easily and Dual boot Linux Mint 20 with Windows 10. You can now use both the OS on the same computer without any problem…If you have any questions or have any problems then comment below. Thank you.
FAQ –
Can I use a SD card to dual boot Linux Mint with Windows 10?
Yes, you can easily use a SD card to flash Linux Mint in it and use it for Dual Booting, just make sure the SD card is empty and has plenty of storage and has faster transfer speed.
Some things are not working after installing Linux Mint as dual boot.
If things such as the internet, apps, etc are not working on your Linux Mint installation then you will need to try to install the compatibility mode version of Linux Mint, as there might be some compatibility issue.
When booting into Live Mode of Linux Mint you get two options to boot into Linux Mint, the first one is the normal one and the second one is the “Start Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon 64-bit (Compatibility Mode)”, boot into compatibility mode and check if all things are working or not.
If all things are working perfectly then proceed to install Linux Mint by following the steps given above.
Fix System Rebooting Automatically to Windows.
Now when starting your computer after installing Linux Mint, if your computer boots automatically into windows instead of showing the grub menu where you can select which OS you want to boot into then here is how you can fix that problem.
To fix the problem all you will need to do is to move the Linux Mint up in the order in the GRUB menu, to do that first restart your computer and go into the boot by clicking F2/F12 OR F10 depending upon your computer brand multiple times. Now once you are in the boot menu.
You will need to now select Linux Mint and move it to the top using the F5 key, after that press F10 to save it, once done you can exit the boot menu. This should fix the problem of the system automatically booting into windows.
