[Solved] *deep breath* I am ready, can you help me remove my windows partition?

CataclysmicGentleman

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I have a desktop and a laptop, both have windows and fedora on them, however since I have a 2 TB desktop with windows and fedora, I feel adventuresome to remove windows from my laptop, how do I remove (safely) the windows partition? Yes I know this will remove my ability to boot from windows, and all of the data on that partition will be removed- but since there are things I could be unaware of about the booting process, is there any way to safely remove the windows partition completely? Do I just delete it and hope for the best? What do I need to do beforehand? I am somewhat new to this.

I presume I need to make sure the default boot in my bios menu is for fedora?

Is there anything I am missing? (PS am typing this from fedora right now :D)

PPS: I am using a Laptop, HP Pavilion, with Ryzen 5 4500U, 16 GB G.Skill ram.
 
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Hello C. Gentleman
I will tell you what I would do; not to say that it is the best way and certainly not the only way: but it works well for me.
Instead of trying to delete just the Windows partition, I would first save all the data that you want to keep. You can use Timeshift for that if you like. If there is not too much to save, just copy it to a flash drive.
Once that is done, I would go ahead and re-install the Fedora distro. Choose the option to erase the whole disk and use it for Fedora.
Once installed you can go ahead and copy all the data you saved back to your 'new' Fedora OS.
Just an Old Geezer talking here!
Tango Charlie
 
If you definitely don't want to keep windows, then Like our friend Charlie, I would go for a complete clean re-install,, it will avoid any possibility of future problems, once set up don't forget to install “Timeshift” or similar
 
Before doing this, preserve /home/<user>/ and then copy it back after installing a clean OS.
 
If you don't wish to go down the reinstall route mentioned above, you can use a partitioning tool like Gparted, fdisk, gdisk etc. to change the MS partition(s) into free space, then put a linux filesystem on it like ext4, or the same filesystem that the fedora sits on, which is likely to be btrfs, and then mount that partition somewhere on your fedora installation with an entry in /etc/fstab, and it will become accessible and usable. I think there are tools in btrfs that may help. You could try this alternative, and if it doesn't suit, you can always do a backup and reinstall of fedora.
 
If you don't wish to go down the reinstall route mentioned above, you can use a partitioning tool like Gparted, fdisk, gdisk etc. to change the MS partition(s) into free space, then put a linux filesystem on it like ext4, or the same filesystem that the fedora sits on, which is likely to be btrfs, and then mount that partition somewhere on your fedora installation with an entry in /etc/fstab, and it will become accessible and usable. I think there are tools in btffs that may help. You could try this alternative, and if it doesn't suit, you can always do a backup and reinstall of fedora.
Gparted has never failed me.

 
Hello C. Gentleman
I will tell you what I would do; not to say that it is the best way and certainly not the only way: but it works well for me.
Instead of trying to delete just the Windows partition, I would first save all the data that you want to keep. You can use Timeshift for that if you like. If there is not too much to save, just copy it to a flash drive.
Once that is done, I would go ahead and re-install the Fedora distro. Choose the option to erase the whole disk and use it for Fedora.
Once installed you can go ahead and copy all the data you saved back to your 'new' Fedora OS.
Just an Old Geezer talking here!
Tango Charlie
Brillant! thank you! I will be sure to reinstall fedora, since I went ahead and removed all the windows related partitions anyways before consulting this forum, I have a few issues I will see if they get resolved by fully reinstalling fedora. Such as the boot order is still windows boot manager then fedora, even though there is no more windows boot...haha..
 
If you definitely don't want to keep windows, then Like our friend Charlie, I would go for a complete clean re-install,, it will avoid any possibility of future problems, once set up don't forget to install “Timeshift” or similar
thank you sir.
 
If you don't wish to go down the reinstall route mentioned above, you can use a partitioning tool like Gparted, fdisk, gdisk etc. to change the MS partition(s) into free space, then put a linux filesystem on it like ext4, or the same filesystem that the fedora sits on, which is likely to be btrfs, and then mount that partition somewhere on your fedora installation with an entry in /etc/fstab, and it will become accessible and usable. I think there are tools in btrfs that may help. You could try this alternative, and if it doesn't suit, you can always do a backup and reinstall of fedora.
This is exactly what I did par advice of a tech savy fedora user who I talk to on discord.
 
Okay I solved my issue. I just did a full install of Linux Mint onto my laptop that was having some major issues, and those issues are fixed now! I am very happy with Linux mint as someone who enjoyed Windows 7 (the layout and such is similar to cinnamon) I will mark this as solved. Just for the record, I have a desktop with two seperate boot options, windows 11 on one NVME and Linux 36 fedora on the other SDD. This laptop I have is a Ryzen 5 4500U 16 GB G.SKill ram, and now with Linux mint! :D The booting errors and such have been resolved by simply using a USB drive and formatting the whole NVME (500 GB)! all in all I am quite happy to have a laptop that truly feels all my own! (This was all a lot easier then I was expecting!):D
 
(This was all a lot easier then I was expecting!):D

Now that warms the cockles of my heart.

For those of us who spent a quarter of a century with Windows, it can seem rather daunting to change OS (Operating System) after all that time.

I burned my bridges September 2014, blowing away Windows 7 (which I quite liked), and I can say that I have not had one regret of any significance.

Enjoy your Linux.

Chris
 
For those of us who spent a quarter of a century with Windows, it can seem rather daunting to change OS (Operating System) after all that time.

To add to this...

It was a couple of years after moving to Linux that I finally went and removed a bunch of software installers.

It had been a couple of years at that point, but it was still a milestone (in my head). I'd never expected to return to Windows, but I kept all those .exe, .zip, .msi, and .rar files handy just in case.
 

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