I have an Acer laptop with 512gb SSD NVMe drive on which is installed a Windows 10 Education OS. After researching about Linux distributions, Zorin OS seemed to be the most suitable Linux distribution for me. Also, many people had trouble when installing both Windows and Linux OS's on the same drive, so I decided to do a safer move: installing Zorin on a separate drive from Windows's. But I have a little problem: my laptop has just a single slot of memory, so I have to install Zorin on a external drive. What do you think, is it possible and safer this type of installation? Also, it is safer to make Windows drive external and Zorin drive internal? What should I keep in mind when installing and running a Linux OS alongside Windows OS? It is my first time when trying to make my laptop as a dual-boot Linux-Windows device, so I want to make it very safe and enjoyable also. Sorry for mispellings, I'm not a native English-speaker.
If you are dual booting alongside Windows then you don't necessarily need a new storage device. Just create a partition of minimum: 20 GB, maximum: your wish how much you are willing to give to Zorin os
That is not true you can safely install windows and zorin on the same storage device
But install both in different partitions if you install Zorin in "windows c drive" it will wipe the drive so make another one other than c drive and install zorin in it
I did that for a little bit, but went completely to Zorin. It is safe, but your time will be messed up it will be easier to fix it thru Zorin then thru Windows. Or you can do a external drive. Still might have the time issue, currently doing this and so far no time issues.
If i was in your shoes, I would have a second drive for both operating systems. The reason, is because that way you can still play around with both, and still have your storage space for each one.
I would do, is i would put the Windows on the external (so swap them around) so you get booted into Zorin and to practice using it. But again either way works, just personal preference.
But on the storage space. make sure that you have what the storage space is you want, because you can't add more storage to the zorin partition later if you want to add more.
Sorry for this late reply. It has passed quite a few time since I've started this topic, but I wondered how well will get along Zorin(or any linux distro) with Windows if they are practically installed on the same drive. I just thought that the updates that will occur in the time on both OS's will harm one or even both OS's, because they work practically on different architectures and see the system partitions different eachother. That's why I said in the topic that many people, after a short research done by me, have complained about this situation, and I wondered if people with both Zorin and Windows installed on the same drive had this type of problem. Thank you!
Users dual boot without too much issue. I wouldn't worry about this very much.
Your biggest risk comes from the Windows side, not the Zorin or Linux side.
This is because Windows can and even will change a configuration that effects BIOS. Zorin or another Linux distro never does that.
That usually amounts to annoyance, not damage, though.
I see. But if I do manual partitioning on Zorin/Linux instead of installing it alongside Windows (which is default option on linux installer) what are the chances to minimise this kind of little trouble? Or are the chances high enough on both alternative installations to occur what you've said and the problem is that Windows is a "stubborn" OS that can change even the BIOS settings that affect dual-booting different OS?