There is a game I am considering getting; it has been out for a few months now, and the devs are specifically blocking it from running under proton with a Kernel Level Anticheat which specifically blocks linux.

Folks on the discussion boards made the point tht it is technically possible to install windows for just one steam game, so I am looking for a guide on how to do that?

I’ve heard that if you don’t activate windows, you can still use it, and if you get the LSTC (?) Version of windows, it is not so annoying.

Does anyone have a guide for how to install windows alongside linux for one game?

If we have a discussion in the comments about whether it is tactically appropriate to give money to a game corporation that requires windows, i guess we can, but i would rather learn how to install windows in the least annoying way possible.

  • Err(()).unwrap()@lemmy.worldEnglish
    46·
    7 hours ago

    If you want to dual-boot Windows and Linux, I strongly recommend that you install them on separate devices, and physically disconnect your Linux device. It’s a pain in the ass, but Windows Update has a particular appetite for bootloaders and will eventually eat whatever you have on your EFI partition (including the Linux kernel and ramdisk) and replace it with its own.

    Otherwise, you can use Chris Titus’ winutil script to delay or completely disable updates, and also to debloat the system and disable anti-features like telemetry and the start menu search.

    Not sure if this applies to LTSC, but if you can, install a European edition of Windows (-N suffix) and set an EU location and timezone, it will allow you to more easily uninstall components because of EU regulations.

    • untorquer@quokk.auEnglish
      4·
      4 hours ago

      Agreeing with others that grub on separate device from windows then just register windows boot in grub and point bios to grub.

      Windows, for all its fuckery, doesn’t screw with that of which it has no awareness.

    • osprior@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      5 hours ago

      I can confirm you only need to physically disconnect the non-windows target drive during installation, and as long as you offline the remaining drives after connecting them, windows and other drives will be fine with updates (THIS is the most important part, do it in Disk Management on first boot into windows).

      I’ve run two Windows instances for years, through multiple OS major updates and never had problems with this setup, before doing the offline drive change to each of them, they would both fuck over each other (I had one for work and one for personal).

      One thing I did that may be necessary, is I didn’t let a boot loader handle the dual boot, I only used BIOS to manage changing the boot target when switching over - I was doing dual windows boots at the time so this may actually be fine with grub, so ymmv on that front.

    • Bronzie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      61·
      6 hours ago

      I physically disconnected all drives to force the EFI partition on the actual Windows drive. It still shat all over boot settings after the first major update.

      Someone recommended I try rEFInd and it’s been great. No update has forced me back into the UEFI to set boot order since.

      Might be an ASUS MB thing, I never figured it out or bothered afterwards.

      • Err(()).unwrap()@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 hours ago

        There are interfaces that allow a sufficiently privileged process to change EFI settings from the OS. Those settings are stored in the UEFI chipset, independent from the bootloader.