Dual Booting Windows 10 & Linux Mint 20.x on Toshiba Dynabook R734/K

Licosha — Dual booting is a process to make our computer / laptop to be able to boot into two different Operating Systems (OS). And my first experience of dual booting a computer / laptop is when I dual booting Windows 10 & Linux Mint 20.3 on my Toshiba Dynabook R734/K.

I want to try Linux based OS on my Toshiba Dynabook R734/K but want still keeping my Windows OS installation intact in case I want to use the Windows 10 back. And that’s where dual booting are the lifesaver.

Actually there are plenty of Linux based OS out there called distros (similar to Android’s custom ROM, maybe) and from many articles, Linux Mint always comes on the list as one of popular Linux distro (I also kind of like the desktop and User Interface), and that’s why I choosed Linux Mint for my very first Linux computing experience.

Default dekstop appearance of Linux Mint 20.3 on my Toshiba Dynabook R734/K

After so many years using Windows (8.1 and 10), I begin to start interested on Linux based OS upon reading articles on internet about how lighweight and efficient Linux based OS are in term of performance and resources usage, and about Linux are Open Source which means it is comes from community, by community, and for community.

But the main reason I started using Linux based OS is because I am interested in programming (mostly coding). Again from the articles I read on the internet, using Linux based OS is a no brainer for people who are mostly using the computer working with programming because everything tends to be more stable thanks to the Linux being Open Sourced.

Steps dual booting Windows 10 and Linux Mint 20.x on Toshiba Dynabook R734/K

Prepare the Linux Mint 20.x installation media. Here, I am using Rufus program to make the Linux Mint installation media into my USB drive.
Boot our Toshiba Dynabook R734/K into BIOS mode: Restart the laptop, then when the LEDs are turned on, press repeatedly the F12 key until it entered the BIOS / ‘Boot Menu’.
Now we are entering the Boot Menu. If you have not plugged in the installation media yet, now is the time.
If on the “Boot Menu” we can see the installation media listed (in my case it is “USB Memory)”, then we can just choose it to straightly boot our Toshiba Dynabook R734/K to start the Linux Mint 20.x installation media, otherwise proceed to step 5.
[Optional] Make the installation media to be the first boot priority. On the main “Boot Menu”, choose “Enter Setup” → “Advanced”, scroll down and find “Change Boot Order”. Next, make the Linux Mint installation media into the top of the list, in my case it is the “USB Memory” (use the touch pad to reach the “Move Up” / “Move Down” buttons). Next, choose “OK” → “Exit” → “Exit Saving Changes”.
Now we are on the Linux Mint 20.x installation boot menu, choose “Integrity check” to boot the Linux Mint 20.x live OS on our Toshiba Dynabook R734/K while checking whether our Linux Mint 20.x installation media has everything working fine or not.
Yay! We are now on the desktop of Linux Mint 20.x live OS (pretty neat User Interface for me). Double click the “Install Linux Mint” icon to begin the installation process. Follow first installation configurations like choosing languages, keyboard, etc. NOTE: It’s recommended to run the installation offline (without connecting to Wi-Fi) to avoid unexpected issues.
Then on the “Installation type”, choose “Install Linux Mint alongside Windows 10”. Next, adjust how much space we want to give for our Linux Mint 20.x OS installation on our Toshiba Dynabook R734/K by shifting the block edges between Windows 10 and Linux Mint. After done, choose “Install Now”.
Next, configure our profile settings like location (time), computer name, password, etc.
Done! Restart our Toshiba Dynabook R734/K when prompted. Now everytime we powered on our laptop, we can choose to boot between Windows 10 or Linux Mint 20.x.

Selet OS to boot on GRUB menu every we boot computer

This tutorial may also be the same whether we are using another Windows version like Windows 7, 8.1 etc. with another Ubuntu-based Linux distro.

Linux Mint 20.x quick review on my Toshiba Dynabook R734/K laptop

The Linux Mint 20.3 is running smoothly, flawlessly, on my old Toshiba Dynabook R734/K which is released around 2015 that has Intel i3-4000M processor with 4 GB RAM.

I am still learning and makes coding mostly as hobby, so most of the times I switched to the Linux Mint to use it for that purpose either for blogging.

Compared to Windows 10, I can feel significant differences when multitasking where programs I used such as Visual Studio, Android Studio, Eclipse, etc. are run snappier on the Linux Mint 20.3.

Plus, I really loved the clean User Interface of Linux Mint 20.3 has. And customizations is just crazy, Windows 10 which is a paid OS are very lame compared to the free OS Linux Mint 20.3.

Surprisingly after some times using Linux Mint 20.x on my Toshiba Dynabook R734/K laptop, for me it can also almost completely replace the Windows OS on daily jobs like typing word document, multimedia like watching movies, and even playing games (I mostly use emulators to play older console titles like PS2, Nintendo, Sega, etc.).

Heck I can even played Windows games on Linux Mint 20.3 on my Toshiba Dynabook R734/K laptop using a program called WINE. You can check the video of some Windows games gameplay I played on Linux Mint 20.3 on my laptop using WINE at Youtube below: