I have both Linux and Windows installed in my laptop. I want to know whether it affects my computer's performance to have multiple operating systems. Can this reduce performance, or is it fine?
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No, it only affects your Disk Space.
While you are using an OS, the other OS is just a bunch of folders and files, often in an unmounted partition, to it does not affect performance
Performance is controlled by CPU, GPU, RAM, and Disk I/O speed, and ONLY the active OS has access to it.
Achede_HD
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If you are using a virtual machine to provide multiple operating systems running at the same time, they must share system resources.
In that case both OS's performance may suffer.
If you have a traditional dual boot system there should be no drag on performance.
C.S.Cameron
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If one of your systems is a reasonably modern Windows, it has a feature known as "Fast Boot", which may prevent you from accessing Windows drives from other systems, and in some cases may even cause trouble when booting. See Is there a way to make Windows Fastboot and Ubuntu work together?
On the other hand, disabling the feature will make your Windows boot longer, although I've got no data on the exact timing. See also "Is it necessary to disable Fast Boot in Windows to dual boot with linux(EFISTUB)?" over at Unix&Linux.
Gallifreyan
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No.
No matter how many operating systems you have installed on a drive, only one of them can be loaded at any given time, with the others simply sitting on the drive doing nothing.
Thus, as others have noted, the only resources having extra operating systems would consume is disk space.
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It would be better to have one computer with one OS, so you can manage it better, but what I did, was I got an external hard disk and I install Linux on it while my main hard disk was on the computer. In that, I can manage my hard disk space and use the same hardware e.g. CPU, GPU, etc,
