Score:7

Will updating my Windows 10 to Windows 11 affect my Ubuntu

id flag

I have dual booted my computer, (by default the OS my computer boots into is Ubuntu) and I now want to update my Windows 10 to Windows 11, will this affect my Ubuntu installation. I have read in some place that this can lead to MBR being overwritten and hence I could loose my Linux system, is it possible that I can do this without affecting my Ubuntu system

us flag
Yes, it will affect. See this question. https://askubuntu.com/q/1347055/124466
br flag
@ArchismanPanigrahi - There is a *risk* of Windows making some change we are not sure of, but we should be able to say for *sure* if indeed Windows-10-to-11 upgrade will re-partition the drive so as to affect Ubuntu. This upgrade should be just that, not a reinstallation, as Windows is now supposed to work as a sort of rolling release. But a simple answer can be found only by testing. Has anybody tested this already? have you? - Not to mention that at the date of the question we are talking about an unofficially leaked pre-beta release.
us flag
@cipricus I posted a link, where someone says that yes, there can be issues when one downgrades to Windows 11. I don't use Windows :-)
br flag
@ArchismanPanigrahi - I do use dual boot and have experience with windows 7 and 10, any Windows installation requires to restore grub. I am interested whether the upgrade from 10 to 11 will do more radical damage like **re-writing the partition table - what the OP here expressly asks**. Answering YES to that doesn't seem right. Looking closer at the question you linked, from a small comment it seems that the problem was fixed with a tool like boot-repair (although the OP doesn't give enough info: `"it worked with ubuntu in live mode. thanks"`). So, MBR doesn't seem to be affected, only grub.
Score:8
aw flag

It seems that Microsoft considers the installation of Grub as an unsecure threat, which sould be deleted to be able to upgrade to Windows 11.
I interprete this that the quality of Linux is so high that Microsoft considers it as a threat for their futuristic market share!

What I suggest to test is:

  1. have an Ubuntu live USB. (i.e.: the one of your installation)

  2. use the Windows 10 installation usb to repair it's own boot startup.

  3. enable secure boot

  4. upgrade the windows 10 to windows 11

  5. disable secure boot

  6. repair the GRUB menu with the live USB

Scott Stensland avatar
ir flag
I can totally see MS disabling ability to disable secure boot while in windows 11 ... mark my words
Score:3
br flag

I use a ThinkPad T14 with encrypted LUKS and GRUB with two boot options, Manjaro and Windows Boot Manager.

To be able to update to Windows 11 I just had to enable SecureBoot (which led to booting directly into Windows), perform the update, and then deactivate SecureBoot again.

No hassle, my GRUB worked right away again.

Score:2
br flag

I had both windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04 on dual boot (default OS: windows 10). I've visited this thread before upgrading to W11. I decided to back up Ubuntu and give it a try. And, I've upgraded to Windows 11 just a few hours ago using insiders, and it hasn't affected my Ubuntu installation at all. Everything's alright:) And lemme let you know, W11 isn't just fast, it's quicky quick quick to boot compared to W10 and the current version is pretty stable as far as I've explored and based on the reviews.

Rob Bar avatar
cn flag
Was your Secure Boot disabled during Windows 10 to Windows 11 upgrade?
Score:2
in flag

Indeed Window can make things messy, several options:

  • if you don't care about reinstalling your Linux distribution, update Windows then do a clean reinstall,

  • if you do care, several disk utility allow to analyze the disk and reconfigure GRUB the MBR. But I would make a backup first just in case...

Edit: Edited thanks to several comments.

br flag
"Windows can make things messy" is one thing, re-partitioning the drive is quite different. Has anybody tested this?
Nmath avatar
ng flag
MBR should not be used when dual booting Windows and Ubuntu. Use GPT
ar flag
Secure boot is required for Windows 11. This means UEFI, not BIOS. Windows won't have allow MBR with UEFI. Therefore you have to use GPT to upgrade to Windows 11. Now, Windows upgrade may clobber the ESP, but that's not what you are saying in this answer.
Score:2
at flag

I had a dual-boot setup with windows 10 & a debian-based linux OS. I used the windows 11 assistant to upgrade my windows 10 pro version to windows 11 pro. Everything transferred fine, including the dual-boot linux operating system. No problems!

karel avatar
sa flag
This answer looks OK to me.
seza443 avatar
cn flag
Same here. I have Linux Mint and Windows 10 Professional. Secure boot disabled. I just upgraded to Windows 11 Professional without any issue. My dual boot still works perfectly.
Score:1
se flag

I dualboot my Arch Linux with Windows 10 with secure boot disabled. I first tried upgrading in a QEMU virtual machine (with secure boot EFI and emulated TPM module, also had to passthrough my own CPU because the emulated CPU wasn't supported), had no problems and then I just upgraded my main machine. Everything works fine (except HP BIOS automatically selected Windows Boot Manager instead of GRUB but that can be fixed by copying the "Microsoft" folder to somewhere safe, deleting it, rebooting system so it auto-selects GRUB this time, then copying that folder back -NOTE: I don't recommend doing it-).

I used the Windows 11 upgrade tool to do it instead of an ISO which is why it finished without giving me "Secure Boot is disabled" error. (Secure boot was disabled while installing, hardware supports it -HP Pavilion 15-dk0005nt-)

Score:1
cn flag

I had Fedora 34 running parallel with Windows 10 on my ThinkPad X1 Yoga (3rd Gen) laptop. Just to upgrade Windows to Windows 11 I turned on Secure Boot and TPM in UEFI/BIOS and downloaded the Windows 11 Installation Assistant from Microsoft to start the upgrade. Upgrade was successful. GRUB works fine.

After Win10->Win11 upgrade I turned off the Secure Boot as my VMs in VirtualBox under Linux stopped working. Now everything works fine again.

Score:0
cn flag

I just updated a Dell Laptop that is dual booting Ubuntu 22.04 with Windows. I had Window 10 (the free download version) and it all went incredibly smooth. All I did was to boot Windows 10 (the second option in the bootloader order in grub) and simply choose to Upgrade to Windows 11. After the download and installation it rebooted to the usual grub bootloader, I chose Windows and it loaded Windows 11. No issues at all, nothing special to be done.

mangohost

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.