A linux gamer asks, "How do I install windows for just one game?"
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.
95 replies
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.
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.
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.
I really hope Windows doesn't alter that. My Gigabyte motherboard forced me to boot into windows after a hios update, because the Linux bootloader was not registered...
Don't even get me started on fucking Gigabyte. With all my heart,
FUCK GIGABYTE.
It is the single worst manufacturer I've ever had to deal with in both a personal and professional capacity. We've had to RMA half a classroom over the last two years because of busted motherboards. In separate incidents, two power supplies violently self-destructed and took the motherboards and CPUs with them. My own Gigabyte 2060 Super's fans had to be replaced within two years because the bearings were crap.
Worse, even the motherboards that didn't mercifully explode are a fucking chore because Gigabyte's UEFI implementation is the worst on the fucking planet. No two versions work alike. Some options are in completely different menus. Sometimes CSM or SecureBoot are busted out of the box. If PXE is enabled (which we have to use frequently), it will ALWAYS put PXE at the start of the boot order. And if it can't connect to a PXE server, it doesn't fall back to the next boot option. It gracefully shits itself and sits on an error message until someone manually restarts it and interrupts the process.
Fuck Gigabyte.
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.
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.
Thanks for the specific instructions re disk management!
I know it is probably not the same guy who put his whole show up on YouTube to watch for free during pandemic but it is goodwill nonetheless.
What is the game? If the company hates you so much to do this, you probably shouldn't support them.
Friends don't let friends play windows.
This… we need to show them we’re not going to support them if they pull this. Linux gaming is getting more and more popular. They’ll need to catch up.
I wonder what other hidden rootkits it runs too...
If you dual boot, install on a separate dedicated drive of possible.
Saves a lot of headache with windows boot part, especially since you're installing after already having Linux installed.
LTSC is fine, and you can just use massgrave.dev to activate it.
Get the Windows 11 IoT LTSC specifically. IoT is better according to nassgrave, and Windows 11 so you get good compatibility with new games. Not much debloating is needed, just use WinUtil by CTT and tweak/disable shit.
Look inside yourself and ask if you really like to play this game that much. Maybe wait a for more weeks and see if your feeling stays the same.
In my experience I can say that these kinds of urges pass away after a while.
If i thought my boycott would have any effect on the publisher, sure. But they have decades of track record showing that they would prefer not to allow their games to run on linux, so I don't think my action alone will have any effect.
When the game came out, i waited; it's been a few months. I've heard the game may die from not enough players. So that is why I'm going to dual boot if I can.
Respectfully, that's where you're going about it wrong imho. You boycott because you personally don't want to support something.
It has about as much impact as voting in a representative democracy.
If you want to actually affect anything anything bigger than yourself you've got to actually become a nuisance. Direct action, campaigns, etc...
Buy anyway! (Haha sorry) The other commenter wasn't even talking boycotting, just thinking about if you really want to buy something. It's not a bad idea to think carefully before buying anything.
Do what feels right for you, though. It's just a game. Just as OS. One is a toy, the other's a tool.
Respectfully that's not the goal of any boycott I've ever heard of.
Boycotts are for achieving some kind of change you want to see in the world, with a group of people organizing to protest something by not buying it, and encouraging others to also oppose buying it. E.g., boycotting Starbucks to pressure them to change their anti-union positions.
Otherwise, not buying something is just a personal preference, political statement, or moral stance, not attached to any outcome.
I've done both and I guess I shouldn't call those both boycotts but people get it, like "I boycott uber because they're awful" and "I'm using the BDS list to boycott businesses that tacitly support Palestinian genocide."
Not the same thing but similar behavior. But then I would still try to avoid businesses that tacitly support genocide even if it was just me, so it feels the same.
Well, which is it? Do you think you're going to have an effect or not?
Regardless, I don't think [email protected] is talking about the effect on the game/publisher. It's the effect on yourself that's important.
I don't really understand the question.
If there were some kind of Linux gamers petition that was attracting signatures, maybe me joining in would have an effect on persuading the publisher, maybe not.
I don't think me buying it or not buying it in a vacuum will have any effect on them deciding to enable the settings in their Kernel level anti cheat to allow Linux compatibility.
Whether the game dies or not definitely won't be affected by whether i buy a copy and play, or not. I don't even want to play the pvp modes which is the majority of the game.
Look, I get it, you really want to pay the game. But if it's a game that might die due to low player count, why bother?
I see two main outcomes: 1) it's amazing and you have such a great time playing it that you're extremely sad when it dies, or 2) it's just a game, you play it for and while and it's no more fun than any other game you have.
FOMO and hype are extremely effective, but not for your benefit.
Personally i think it would be worth it to experience it before it dies; it is part of a franchise that I enjoy and one of my tech podcasts just had an offtopic episode where they talked about how much they liked it as a game, and whether or not it would die and what that says about the games industry.
I know I don't have to play it. But i have extra hdds lying around, and the price is affordable especially on sale, so why not?
I mostly want to play it solo/single player anyway; i don't really care for pvp.
If you are willing to tinker a bit and troubleshoot there is a way to passthrough a single GPU to a VM with minimal overhead. Took me a while to get working and requires a second device (laptop, phone) for the install. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTWf5D092VY
VMs are frequently blocked by anti-cheat implementations, unfortunately, so no guarantee it will work.
If you want to install Windows on another drive and quite rightly don't want to pay MS for the privilege, then massgrave is your friend.
I used to dualboot for the same situation, just exam software instead of game. You can find entire video tutorials online for dualbooting.
Would you be willing to link one that you used?
I didn't use a guide. I can make one later today.
Maybe what you want to hear, but I once bought Marathon because it wasn't declared that GNU/Linux is blocked again, like Destiny 2 was. I requested a refund on Steam and 30 minutes later was granted. It's not worth the hassle for one game, IMO.
I was waiting to see if it would be supported, and it turns out it could easily be supported, but the devs disallow linux support.
It sucks.
Typical Linux users ignore 'min. spec requirements -OS: WIndows **'. The hidden transaction fees you incur costs everyone else.
Lol I can't even disagree.
I stopped bothering reading specs because my gaming pc (bazzite—yeah I know, I'm extremely lazy) just runs whatever I throw at it. I feel like you'd have to very aggressively develop a game exclusively for windows too manage to get it to not run on Linux these days.
Why you'd dev a game for office computers I'll never know but we're all different people making up a beautiful kaleidescope of humanity I guess.
All you have is anecdote.
Idgi, anecdote for what? Of what? You don't want to be a part of the kaleidescope? Yeah? You're a big grump?? You want a hug? 🥹 I'll hug you, get over here grumpypants 🫱🏻🫱🏻
Look at their post history, you're talking to an actual crazy person lol
Pretty sure this is the guy that runs the anti Linux subreddits. He has mental health issues and is weird and obsessive.
Probably not related but the pro-ai crowd like copy's this guys format or they work together or something because the ragebait they use is pretty much the same style/patterns that target clueless children.
I encourage no one to engage with him, don't ignore him just if you see his name downvote and move on.
I've got some pretty troubled people in my family, so I'm actually used to it. They're part of the kaleidescope too ú_ù
Kinda hijacking, pardon me, but is there anyone reading who'd be willing to explain the specifics of "Microsoft eats boot sectors" or direct me to some documents?
I have a laptop with Microsoft / Linux partitioned on a single internal drive dual booting between them and have never... well never known that I had such an issue, but I've broken it in a lot of creative ways, and maybe this Microsoft greedy boot behavior would inform some of it and help me make it smoother
Usually after a big update, stupid windows overwrites EFI boot partition to windows bootloader instead of grub, which makes you crack out a USB to reinstall grub so you can access your linux system again.
Doesn't happen that often but still a pain.
Thank you very much.
the safest fastest but expensive way, get a second drive that's big enough to run windows and your game. disable the drive from BIOS boot options and add an entry to your bootloader. i salvaged an old 512gb sata to do this for firmware/some legal document things that only work on Windows.
there's vfio but i believe you still need two video cards to get that working, one for the host one for the vm.
just never trust windows on your main boot drive that only leads to you having to recover your bootloader when a windows update replaces it. and this is not a question of if they will it is a question of when.
Put the installer on a USB, remove your Linux drive (because you should install it on a separate drive, and Microsoft will infect your boot partition otherwise), and run it. That’s it.
Then follow the instructions on massgrave to activate it.
I've had Windows cause enough problems with wrecking my Linux boot partition to not want to try this again. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It works fine most of the time. But I'm not willing to risk that rare occasion when windows renders my Linux drive unbootable. Maybe there's a way to fix the boot partition and I haven't figured it out. But restoring my whole system is so annoying that I wouldn't risk it.
So i would recommend that the best option is to consider just ignoring that game and playing the endless number of great games out there that run on Linux already.
I was recommended rEFInd and it's worked wonders. Never had another boot issue since, and I did like you: physically disconnected all drives except the one I wanted Windows on. Still messed up my boot settings.
Recommend you give it a try if you dare go again.
If you must run Windows, do it on a completely separate device if you can. That way your one game that's DRM-locked to Windows can stay on its own machine without Windows getting hostile to your Linux install like in a dual-boot.
If you don't have/can't obtain a separate device for installing Windows on and you must dual-boot, the safest way to do that is to disconnect your Linux drive(s), install Windows on its own fresh drive so it can have its own boot partition and its own bootloader, reconnect your Linux drive(s) after your Windows drive is finished setting up and set your EFI boot order to point to your Linux drive, and then set your Linux bootloader, usually GRUB, to query your Windows drive and let you pick it to boot from, that way hopefully Windows stays on its own drive and its own boot partition and doesn't try to screw over your Linux drive and its boot partition.
What i half remember is that if the windows installer (or Linux installer for that matter) detects an EFI boot partition, it will write to it, regardless of what the software says it will do, which is why we have to do this.
But once windows is installed and grub uses the chainloader method to pass the boot to windows's bootloader, does that mean that future windows updates will restrict their changes to the windows bootloader? Basically, what risks should I watch out for if Windows is on a drive in the same computer as linux?
I have tried to have separate computers share the same desk, speakers, keyboard, mouse, and dual monitors in the past, but it is not easy or cheap to do well :/
Also, dual booting is much easier when using Windows 10 with Linux than using Windows 11 with Linux.
If you purely want Windows to have minimum impact on your Linux system then avoid Windows 11.
Thanks for the advice!
GRUB just queries it so you can pick it and boot from it, it should still be on its own drive if you do as I described with it, or at least it did last time I dual-booted, which was forever ago.
I recently did this, using a VM with GPU passthrough. This meant my Linux OS couldn't use the GPU while it was active. It's a pain in the ass, but it technically works. I won't describe how to do it, because there are good guides online.
Anti-cheat detects when its in a VM and blocks it.
Depends on the anti cheat. GTA V runs just fine on a vm with sunshine/moonlight using proxmox with GPU passthrough.
I literally said I have experience with it working, so not always. It depends on the game, and OP didn't specify.
The anti-cheat is Battle-eye. How does it detect that it is inside a VM?
I'm thinking that dual booting on a spare drive will be all around easier.
You can do one of three, for different levels of ease and performance:
You will need to do further research on some of the stuff I said, but I gave you the correct things to look up.
They go down in order of difficulty. Boxes will be less efficient but easiest. The other two have the same efficiency, but the second is a bit more challenging
I wouldn't suggest Boxes for gaming. Even if it could do a GPU passthrough, I don't think current anticheat games, like what OP wants to run, play well with that.
I have a windows install on a USB hard-drive. It's not fast but that might not be a problem if you use a fast USB storage. I just plug it in and boot from it via UEFI.
This is what I do, just a spare nvme drive thrown in an external enclosure. Rufus has an option called “windows to go” that installs the iso as opposed to making a bootable installer, and it gives an option to block Windows from overwriting local disks to avoid the boot loader issues too. Has worked quite well up until a point recently where it just refused to boot anymore with an unhelpful error despite not having been touched in months. No updates or changes since it worked before. Good ol windows…
That's cool, i had never heard of "windows to go" before -- I may try that out!
A spare NVME? In this economy?
Probably from the previous economy
Hah, I had written then deleted a part because the comment was already pretty long saying it almost has the same energy as “my spare yacht” at the moment. Reaaaally glad I had the foresight/luck with timing I did on keeping components around. Can’t wait for some bubbles to burst
I was installing Win10 Pro to a SSD that I would stick in an external case. Would work, for a while, but eventually would get an error and would be unable to boot, or repair it. Windows seems to be designed to know when it's installed on an external drive, and to hose itself out of spite. I gave up after the fourth time, resigned to the fact I just had to find an alternative CAD software package that I could access from Linux.
Interesting. I suppose I’ll see if it happens again, luckily not too big a deal as Windows was more a convenience for a couple utilities I use, already found a Linux friendly way for one of them thanks to it borking itself recently. If they’re intentionally doing that and giving me an excuse to rid myself entirely of Windows, I guess I won’t complain too much ahaha. I just chalked it up to the usual Windows shenanigans
Windows knows when it's on an external drive. The installer would insist Windows could only be installed on an internal drive, so I would have to swap out one of the SSD's on the motherboard with the drive I intended to use. After it was done, I'd switch it out to an external case with a USB-C connection. Might boot up a dozen times, more or less, then crap out. At least it never did anything to screw up the Linux drives, but they're ext4 formatted, so Windows won't recognize them.
I am not an expert on Windows game rootkits (or Windows in general...), but would it perhaps run in a VM?
At least then you wouldn't have to do a "real" install...
Nah, that used to be a solution a few years back if you had the patience to setup GPU-passthrough with a single or two GPUs. But these anticheat rootkits now detect a running VM and deny you service either way.
Dualbooting Windows 10 LTSC with massgrave activation seems to be the best option for now if you really nee..want a Windows installation with GPU acceleration. For Nongaming/Rendering tasks: Winboat.
I played Forza Horizon 6 pirated like this. It isn't an easy solution, but it worked for that one. I'm not saying it'll work for anything else, but it does work for Denuvuwu.
I mean pirated FH6 works on Linux with Proton, too. So there isnt kernel level anti linux/cheat in place either way.
I tried that, and it didn't. Maybe there's a newer version.
Ugh, I feel you on this. Can't help unfortunately because I just bit the bullet and dual boot, there's just one or two games that don't work well for me on Linux. Best of luck
I did that twenty-ish years ago. Linux was and is my OS, but I wanted to play Dungeon Keeper, so I installed Win98 just for this game to autostart in it, and auto-reboot afterwards.
You can run Dungeon Keeper in the linux version of DOSBox now so that's not really needed anymore. Plus now we have KeeperFX that runs perfectly fine in Wine/Proton and we're even getting close to a native linux build. :D
I'm long over playing DK, so thanks, but no need.
I was watching a let's play recently. What a wild game
I found it boring and easy. Every dungeon was a cakewalk. Long after I gave up on that game (and formatted the Win98 partition), I learned that my machine was simply underpowered for the game. The gameplay basically took the whole machine, and left nothing for the enemies' "AI" to properly run on. All the people who complained how hard this game was had way beefier machines than I had...
That's incredible. Not enough clocks for the baddies
horny little me as an undiagnosed bisexual, it made me feel very peculiar as a kid
If you decide to go the dual-boot route with shared storage between windows and Linux, then I recommend using a btrfs partition. You'll have to install WinBtrfs to use it on windows, but the experience is a filesystem that's much better than ntfs on both windows and Linux.
Thanks for the tip! I've had some bad experience with ext4 drivers on windows, so good to here that the btrfs drivers are better.
As others has stated, what game is it? Depending on the answer you might not need to install Windows after all.
One of the handful of games where support is "borked" on protonDB because it uses kernel level anti-cheat and specifically disallows linux.
It's starting to seem really strange that you're being evasive. Not mentioning it in the OP, sure, it's not the relevant part and you're not obliged to share.
Writing long awkwardly worded sentences instead of answering a direct question of people trying to help you... several times?
Are you embarrassed by the game you're trying to play?
Yes.
I don't see how the game is relevant to the discussion.
It will have to be a mystery, although should be relatively easy to guess.
Why it matters is because there are different workarounds for different games. Some can run just fine in a VM. Others have wine tricks or proton tricks that you can use. Still others run dockerized on winboat.
Being evasive just means that people have to give you generalized solutions that may or may not work for your particular scenario. Help could exist for you, but you'll never know.
General solutions are what i want. There are no Linux workarounds for this game. Me naming the game would only derail the conversation even more than me not naming it already has. Thanks :)
Does the game run under Wine? That will let you avoid Proton, which is Steam specific. You can also configure network access for specific programs under Wine.
OP specifically says they're using Kernel Level Anticheat, so it will never work
Also afaik proton can be used outside of steam, but I'm not an expert.
Yes, proton can absolutely be used outside of Steam, either manually via a proton prefix/whatever or via another launcher like Heroic which sets all that up for you
There’s no such thing? You’ll have to install windows just like you installed Linux. I’m confused how you got Linux on your machine yet you’re asking this question-did someone else install it for you? If so, best to not mess around with repartitioning your drive. High likelihood of you screwing up your boot partition. Best to jam in another hard drive, unplug your Linux drive and go to town. Or heck, do what you want and learn :) breaking things is the best way to learn…
Just please back up all your files before you go crazy. You can’t permanently damage or break anything on your computer, but you CAN permanently delete files you cared about :)
To be honest, installing linux the firat time was a real disaster back in 2006. I had to learn how to use the virtual terminal, run some terminal commands, and handwrite an xorg config file just to get a gui.
Since then installing linux has gotten pretty easy. I'm comfortable repartitioning, backing up data, etc., and a lot of those skills were developes by working through guides and learning as I went.
I'm non knowlegeable or comfortable about
I also don't know what I don't know. But installing windows as a dual boot option has got to be common enough that a guide exists, right?
I’m not sure why my prior comment is getting downvoted, people are weird on the internet. I was confused because you need some level of expertise to install Linux or any operating system for that matter - ie it’s not something my grandma or my parents can do… your questions seem overly cautious (probably not a bad thing)
I think you’re fine based on what you say you’re comfortable with. You totally can install windows right on your existing drive, but people have been having issues doing that (no fault of their own). First, you’d have to shrink your Linux partitions - this is a little tricker than just straight up nuking a drive and repartitioning. Many Linux installers can do this for you on a drive running windows, I don’t believe the windows installer can do it the other way around (at least not with a pretty gui that’s right in your face when installing windows). So you’d kind of be doing it backwards - usually you’d install windows and then let linux fix it all up nice nice. The other problem is that people don’t trust Microsoft software to do this these days. There’s been issues with windows taking over the boot partitions and making the Linux partition unbootable. This is why so many people recommend dual physical drives when dual booting - windows does its thing “over there” and Linux does its thing “over here”. Worst case it’s malicious, best case, the errors in the past have been Microsoft incompetence.
First choice? Get the game working in Linux - but it sounds like that’s just not going to be an option and you’ve researched that.
2nd choice: I’d use two drives, one with windows and one with Linux. Also the most expensive and if the only thing you do on the windows drive is play that one game - kind of a huge waste of a resource. But easiest least risky setup from both a “oops I screwed up the install” and a “windows is playing nice in the sandbox”
3rd choice? Dual boot off a single hard drive. If I were doing it, I’d probably nuke the whole drive after a backup, and make all the final partitions. Then I’d install windows and make sure it landed where it was supposed to. Then I’d install Linux.
Last choice? I’d try to resize the existing partitions and install Linux. I would definitely find a guide for that and follow it, (sorry I don’t know of one to recommend but I’m sure there’s plenty of good ones). My guess is you’ll end up back at 3rd choice ;)
And I’ll reiterate my prior point - good time for a solid backup! :)
Good luck! You’ll be fine :)