Windows10 Dual boot w/ Gentoo w/ Bitlocker Encryption(TPM)

[chintansandesara]

Hello,

I am not an experienced Linux user, however, I have dabbled on and off in Ubuntu for the past year. It may be my personal limitation, but the fact that Ubuntu looks and somewhat acts like Windows (I have been an almost exclusive Windows user for past 17 years) does not motivate me to explore Ubuntu to its full potential. As a result, I believe that installing Gentoo will force me to understand and learn concepts of Linux and think in Linux way. Having said that, I think I am ready to learn advanced levels of knowing Linux and I am convinced that installing Gentoo from scratch is the way to learn a lot about Linux.

On that note, I currently have a clean installation of 64-bit Windows 10 Pro (free upgrade from Windows 7 --> Windows 8.1 --> Windows 10) running on a 8-year old Thinkpad T400 (Intel Core2 Duo 2.8 Ghz (T9600), 8GB Ram, 256MB ATI Graphics, 500GB SSD) with three drives, i.e. C:, E: and F:. All three drives are fully encrypted using Windows 10 built in Bitlocker encryption with TPM v1.2 and PIN enabled.

Reminder: My PC does not support UEFI as my laptop precedes that technology. So my laptop runs on legacy BIOS.

I am trying to find out how to add Gentoo to my laptop (dual boot) without un-encrypting my Windows 10 drives and also have encryption enabled in Gentoo? I am reading the Gentoo Handbook but unable to find anything non-UEFI dual boot related that can help. I don't want to begin installing Gentoo as dual boot, without being sure that I am selecting the right options, lest it breaks my Windows installation and I lose my primary system since I only have one laptop to work on.

I am comfortable with partitioning the drives and beginning Gentoo installation (following instructions on Gentoo Handbook), but I wanted to find out if there is a special procedure to follow since my windows 10 drives are encrypted? Do I have to decrypt them before installing Gentoo or is there a way to install Gentoo in dual boot, without having to decrypt Windows 10 drives?

Also, is there a way I can better understand the kernel & hardware options during boot, so that I can select the right options? I tried to understand them from Gentoo Handbook but not much was understood.

Once again, I apologize in advance for being a noob and trying Gentoo, but i feel that if I don't take the leap of faith then my laziness would never allow me to learn the power of Linux on out-of-box systems like Ubuntu.

Thank you in advance.

Regards,
Chintan.

[keet]

If your boot configuration changes in a way that Windows recognizes (such as booting from G.R.U.B. instead of directly into Windows), you might need to temporarily disable the Bitlocker protectors, (re)boot using the new configuration into Windows, and then enable the Bitlocker protectors to accept the change.

[Hu]

Before you do anything with Gentoo, make a fresh backup of anything on your existing system that you want to keep. Installing Gentoo is not inherently dangerous, but you will be using commands that, used improperly, can cause data loss. Since your existing Windows system is encrypted, recovering from accidental data loss could be more difficult than on an unencrypted system.

[chintansandesara]

So to understand you correctly, if I disable bitlocker comletely before installing gentoo as the second OS, then install GRUB2 and setup dual boot, can I then (after Gentoo has been successfully installed) boot into Windows 10 and enable bitlocker for fulldisk encryption, along with Gentoo LUKS enabled as well?

What I am trying to figure out is, instead of jumping through hoops to install Gentoo, while Windows 10 is still encrypted, can I simply disable encryption on Windows 10, install Gentoo and then enable encryption on Windows 10 and Gentoo both? Would that be easier and simpler alternative?

Regards,
Chintan.

[Hu]

I do not know. I have never run Windows 10, and based on what I have read so far, have no plans ever to do so.