Dual boot Windows and Ubuntu

Dual booting means installing two operating systems on one computer and choosing between them each time it starts. Running Ubuntu natively gives you the full speed of your hardware and a genuine Linux environment for development, while keeping Windows for everything else. It is a well-trodden path, but it changes your disk's partitions, so a careless step can cost data. This guide covers the preparation that keeps it safe, the installation itself, and the problems people commonly hit afterwards. If you only need Linux tools, consider WSL 2 first; our guide explains it, and it needs no partitioning at all.