How to install Zorin 18 along side Windows on Unraid?

Installing Zorin OS
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Currently on Unraid running a bare metal NVME Windows 10 running as VM with mouse/keyboard/gpu hardware passthru how to install Zorin 18 along side Windows?

I believe I have secure boot is disabled and running UEFI for the Windows 10.

My other option is to add another VM on Unraid while Windows VM is shutdown. I could pick an Unraid Ubuntu Linux template, add the stuff similar to my Windows 10 VM template but not use the on board NVME SSD and just use a vdisk and set the size. Later i could transfer my data to my Unraid storage for a back up, and at a later date wipe the Windows 10. I did sign up for the Windows 1yr updates.

This was originally Unraid box with a 2nd PC with Windows 10 that I converted to 1 box.

NVME SSD is set to GPT disk.

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I might have answered my question, this video is for Mint but same instructions should work for Zorin 18.

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Set boot order to 1

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Set boot order to 2

Ahead of time I resized my C drive in windows to smaller, left 128000 free at the end.

During the Zorin Install.

Picked other for install location. Selected my 128000 free space and made a partition primary and 64000 and ext4 and / then ok. Then when that was done I selected the remaining free space as ext4 and /home and ok. Selected the main whole disk as boot loader and continued with install.

After you install Zorin 18 Core you have to shut down, go into unraid web gui and the iso install media just erase the boot order 1 to nothing. Then change the NVME SSD boot order to 1.

So now have a dual boot Zorin 18 Core and Windows 10 Pro running as a VM in Unraid. I pass thru half of the CPU cores, pass the keyboard, pass the mouse, pass the 3050 GPU.

Now to setup Zorin 18, 1st thing installed Bitwarden for my passwords.

Got my 2 monitors in correct order, couldn't figure how to move the task bar to the left monitor so enabled for all.

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Do you use Zorin taskbar? Rightclick on it, properties, then go to tab position and enable "Display panels on all monitors"

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Welcome to the Forum!

I've shorten the thread Title a bit because it stands the same in the first Passage.

1 Like
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Only other problem I have had is the Nvidia drivers for my 3050 GPU, version 535 is the only one that works, the rest get black screen on boot with monitors cycling on and off.

The other problem I briefly had was using /home from a temporarily Mint 22.2 installed with a separate /home partition, the Brave browser was locked to Mint and wouldn't load so installed Zorin again with a separate /home partition formatting it.

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I was able to get the correct monitor order with display settings.

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I am still getting used to the different look compared to Windows 10 Pro.

Linux can do the same as Windows for the most part.

On Linux Mint 22.2 I didn't like that they still use Firefox as the default browser, the current Firefox isn't like Firefox of old and will not say more.

Just some of the basic stuff on Zorin seems so much simpler.