I would use two different disks, the one that you have already for windows and a second one for Linux. When you’re ready to install Linux Unplug the windows disk, so that you can’t screw it up ( been there, did that 😭) then when you need to use either the Linux or Windows Just choose the start up disk in bios at booting, usually F11, a tiny bit longer than dual booting, but it will save you a lot of hassle. Dual booting is rather dangerous as windows has the annoying habit of wiping Linux grub setups when updating, and Linux has the annoying habit of wiping everything, two different disks, much easier.

Can someone please guide me into installing it the safest way possible?

1. Get the installation image you want to use. Fedora has a lot of different flavors, I think they call them “spins,” so it’s important to know the difference and choose the right one for you.

2. Install it on a VM in VirtualBox. Play around with it, figure out what all the installation steps do, don’t be afraid to break the VM.

3. Play around with the VM in fullscreen just to get a feel for it. Don’t blame the OS for performance issues, that’s probably just the resource limitations of a VM.

4. Repeat steps 1-3 as necessary to find an OS that is comfortable enough to be your daily driver.

5. Use a program like Rufus to make a bootable USB out of the installation image.

6. Run the installer like you practiced. MAKE SURE YOU SELECT THE CORRECT HARDDRIVE, DON’T OVERWRITE YOUR WINDOWS DRIVE. Otherwise, besides MAKING EXTRA SURE ABOUT WHICH HARDDRIVE YOU INSTALL IT TO, use defaults for settings you aren’t sure about.

I want to install Fedora on a separate drive and keep my windows drive completely intact (Need it for work).

I cannot stress the above warning enough: formatting the drive is the one step in installation that cannot be undone. If you format your windows drive, you cannot ever recover that data anymore.

Since it’s work related hardware, I have 2 pieces of advice; you should follow one or the other:

1. Don’t. Don’t fuck around with work hardware. It should be a separate PC that you literally only ever use to get work done. Whether it’s owned by a company or you’re self-employeed, mixing your hobby/leisure/gaming/tinker/daily driver with your work computer is a baaaaaad idea. You will get something all fuzzed up, you will try to fix it by reinstalling the OS or otherwise doing disk formatting/partitioning, and you will end up corrupting windows.

2. Okay, so you decided not to heed my warning because you like gaming (or whatever) too much and can’t afford a separate desktop/tower rn. i get it, I did the same once and lived to tell the tale (i do have separate machines now, fwiw). In that case, before you install fedora, simply disconnect the Windows drive. Yank it right out and don’t reinstall it until you’ve got linux up and running just how you like it. Not just after the installation, but after the configuration. Then there’s no chance you accidentally format/corrupt your drive.

Preferably I would like GRUB to ask which boot option I want to use if my linux drive is set to be my boot drive and to boot straight to windows if its my windows drive set to boot.

If the installer gives you the option, simply install Grub on the same drive as Linux. When you select the linux drive in your BIOS’ boot options, it will run grub, which will give you options, including booting into windows if you want. When you select the windows drive in your BIOS’ boot options, it will use the windows bootloader (which boots straight into windows, unless you have multiple windows installations).

For new users the main question is not what operating system but what window manager as that is what shapes day to day user interaction. KDE plasma is a solid choice.

Installing it on a separate drive should be no problem. Just select the correct drive during install.

I use F10 to get to the boot menu on drive and select the drive it needs to boot from there. I have used it once in the last year and although it required many updates its still working.

If you mean different physical drives, I would suggest detatching the drive with the already installed system when installing the second one.

Also, Linux installers may behave differently from one another, so I would suggest testing on another machine if possible, or at least backing up what you cannot afford to lose in the current machine, shrinking the Windows partition with its native partition manager instead, and picking a system whose installer can spot the correct partitions, maybe e.g. Mint with its option to be installed alongside an already installed system, or Endeavour which, from what I remember, can detect empty partitions.

Also if during install, grub is not set up to have both Linux and Windows as start options, there is a grub manager on Linux too, so that can be salvaged.

And lastly, a word of warning, and reiterating a past point, testing something as big as a dual boot in a computer with sensitive and already existing data is playing with fire.

on the second part if you have an efi motherboard I can recommend the refind boot manager which is eseayer to set up. and you can dual boot from multiple disks. you have to install the package after setting up your fedora install

here is the official dokumentation from fedora https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Refind

Did you manually partition? It sounds like when you installed Nobara the /boot/efi partition got formatted, a similar thing happened to me recently (just wasnt paying attention), I used a Windows install USB to get a command prompt and restore the EFI entry.

For anyone new to the Linux world, I can’t recommend Learn Linux TV enough. He has a video walking through this exact process, here’s an Invidious and YouTube link for it.

As far as dual booting goes, issues can arise after updates. I recall this happening a few months back due to a Windows update. So just be aware of this possibly happening down the road. I need Windows for work at times too, but I strictly use a VM. I’ve hated Microsoft since Windows 8, their amount of user tracking is bonkers and a big part of why I just use a VM. This is just food for thought though.

Fedora will default to your empty drive, but just in case, but into the liveUSB, and identify your drive assignments and partitions so you are POSITIVE you’re installing to the right drive. The installer will ask you multiple times where you want to install, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

Grub will default to asking you what you want to boot. You can change the defaults after install if you’d like.

Fedora is a solid choice. I recommend Kinoite because it’s familiar to Windows users and impossible to break.

As a n00b I’d go Mint, unless you have hardware concerns in which case Fedora is the only option these days (Ubuntu is bad now). I have used Linux since 1996 and would not dualboot in 2025. Microsoft will fuck your shit. Just roll with two boxes.

I advice installing fedora gnome and enjoying

The best advice I can give you is to switch to Linux is don’t right away. Switch the applications you use to open source or Linux compatible alternatives that also run on windows. Then after you get used to those on windows then make the switch.

I would also recommend not dual booting at first since it’s too easy to jump ship at the slightest issue vs sticking with it to figure out the issue just like you would with a problem on windows. It’s a real thing I have experienced it in reverse as a long time Linux user that tried Windows 11 i kept jumping back to Linux every time I ran into issues that caused frustration.

rawdog arch