I'm looking to install Linux on our home laptop and see if I can convince my wife to migrate off Windows. Since I'm not sure there won't be times we need or want to boot back into Windows, I want to set it up so we can dual boot. The laptop only has a spot for one drive however so I can't use two drives and chose them with the bios. I know in the past Windows has been problematic with dual boot setups on a single drive, corrupting the boot drive following updates and what-not. I'd really like to avoid that if possible.

Any suggestions on how best to go about it, or something I should at least avoid because it's known to be problematic?