Question to #blind people who use two #operatingSystems on your computer: How do you dual boot accessibly? I'm getting some help from someone to set up my #computer, and I'm trying to decide between just getting rid of #Windows or dual booting. If I dual boot, I'm thinking of buying a second hard drive just for #archLinux. It's expensive to get another hard drive, but this way I wouldn't need to get rid of #Windows11. Is there anything I would need to do to make this setup #accessible? How do you know when the menu to choose which OS you want comes up?
#tech #technology #Linux #accessibility @mastoblind @main
I dual boot with two separate drives. Using EFI, it's quite easy and they show up as named entries when selecting the boot device.
@RareBird_15 @mastoblind @main I too would like to know this.
@RareBird_15 @mastoblind @main I don't know if that works for you. You can try set a GRUB_INIT_TUNE to play a sound when grub start then configure the hotkey feature of each menu voice be able to select entries with a specific key
@RareBird_15 @mastoblind @main our awesome @alex19EP improved the #accessibility of our #archiso a few years ago.
Currently we are using a systemd-boot config with beep (see https://man.archlinux.org/man/loader.conf.5.en) for #UEFI systems helping to select entries in the menu. You can do that too once you have installed #ArchLinux (or another OS that supports it).
AFAIK, you can dual boot Windows using sd-boot, but it is worth reading relevant wiki articles beforehand (e.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_boot_with_Windows).
@RareBird_15 @mastoblind @main It's been years since I've done it, but you can repartition your current hard drive to install Linux and you won't need a second harddrive and you won't need to get rid of Windows.
@cj @mastoblind @main I actually thought about doing this, but I'm not sure how much space to give Windows and how much to partition for Linux. I have a 1Tb hard drive.
@RareBird_15 @mastoblind @main How much are you planning on storing in each operating system? Also, which operating system will you be using as your primary?
If I were to do it now, and assuming everything works the way it did 10 years ago, Windows would be my primary OS, and I'd assume I'd be using it for some virtual machines, so I'd give Windows at least 512G. For Linux, I'd use about 128G for the operating on partition '/' system and the rest on the '/home' partition. I'd flip things if Linux was going to be my primary. All of these could be changed drastically depending on my first two questions. You should find a lot of information on the web, and I'm sure you'll get lots of suggestions.
When I installed Ubuntu, gparted would come up and let you partition your hard drive. This was accessible with Orca but you wanted to be careful and know what you're doing. It could be a bit tedious. You might also have to shrink your Windows partition to make all of this work. Again, this was all 10 years ago for me, so take all of this with a grain of salt.
@cj @mastoblind @main Linux will be my primary OS. I'm not sure about how much I plan to store. I don't download a lot of things except apps, which I tend to try a lot of.
@RareBird_15 @mastoblind you can partition your hdd with 2 partitions to allow for 2 OS on the same HDD
@RareBird_15 You also have the option to run Windows in a virtual machine on top of Linux. That might be easier.
@GreenSkyOverMe Yeah, I'm thinking I might just do that.