I’m planning to install CachyOS alongside an existing Windows 11 installation (Dual Boot) and would like some advice on the bootloader choice. I already read the chapter „Dual Booting Windows and CachyOS“ in the manual, which also describes systemd and grub only.
My Plan:
Filesystem: Btrfs
Security: Re-enabling Secure Boot (via sbctl) and Bitlocker after installation.
Status: CachyOS installer suggests Limine by default.
My Questions:
Would you recommend sticking with the Limine default or switching to GRUB for this specific Btrfs + Secure Boot setup?
1 Given that I use Btrfs, is the integration of automatic snapshot booting (like grub-btrfs) currently as seamless in Limine as it is in GRUB?
2 Are there any known issues with Limine and Bitlocker/TPM PCR-values when dual-booting Windows?
3 CachyOS favors Limine for performance; however, would I lose the “safety net” of easy snapshot rollbacks from the boot menu if I don’t use GRUB?
In fact, they have similar capabilities, but I use GRUB because it allows you to encrypt the boot partition, which isn’t possible with Limin.
I generally believe that not using disk encryption is a mortal sin. It’s not serious. You’re given the opportunity to encrypt your system, and you don’t do it. Even Windows does this by default, provided you have an activated copy of Windows, of course.
Anyone who gets their hands on your drive will be able to read a ton of information on it, even if you deleted it God knows when.
And if you ever run an AI agent on your PC, it’ll be a quiet nightmare. And considering that Windows is an agent-based system, I don’t want Copilot snooping around on my Linux drives.
I had a windows update quietly delete everything on the efi partition while using limine (which borked the system so badly I needed to clean install both again as neither recovery media could fix it), but switching to grub haven’t had any further issues. I liked limine for the ease of use, but grub has been rock solid after the (minimal) intervention needed to add windows to the boot menu. BTRFS is better for snapshots, although in some cases I’ve used ext4. I think that part’s up to personal preference.
Same as above, using Limine. Windows 10’s on one drive, CachyOS is on a separate one (btrfs), didn’t have any major issue besides following the secureboot guide to make Cachy work with it
Thank you to everyone and thank you for the great tutorials. I managed to do it, and it works well. If any user has questions, feel free to contact me.
