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If I have Windows 10 as well as Ubuntu installed on my laptop, will the MAC address of the wi-fi network card going to be the same or it will be different in Windows and in Ubuntu?

If it is the same, can I somehow change the MAC address in Windows or Ubuntu, so that eventually I will have a different MAC address in both operating systems?

JAN ORTS
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3 Answers3

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You can change the MAC address using macchanger:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AnonymizingNetworkMACAddresses

IIRC it will revert back to its original value at boot. So if you dual-boot between Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux, then you could simply change the MAC address to another MAC address every time you boot GNU/Linux.

This way you system will have MAC address A when running Microsoft Windows and MAC address B when running GNU/Linux.

Ole Tange
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Will the MAC address of the wi-fi network card going to be the same or it will be different in Windows and in Ubuntu?

Yes. The MAC address is encoded in the hardware of the WiFi network adapter.

K7AAY
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The MAC address is burned-in to the physical device by the factory. So regardless of what OS you are running on your PC you still have the one MAC Address. To have different MAC Addresses you should have different network cards. For example if your PC have Ethernet Port and WiFi Card then you have two addresses.

And changing your MAC address? The short answer is NO, you can't.

I haven't tried this but a quick search on the internet renders results like the following here. But note that it doesn't mean that you are changing your MAC address rather you are making it appear as if you have a different MAC address, that is just Virtual. If a device is communicating with your machine on the Datalink layer, it will still be able to see your original MAC address.

Michael
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