I have a brand new laptop with two m.2 slots, one with preinstalled Windows 11 and the other empty. I want to have a completely independent dual boot machine. I purchased an m.2 drive, removed the bottom laptop cover, inserted the new m.2 into the empty slot, removed the original Windows m.2, then installed Ubuntu (22.04). I then replaced the original m.2 and now have a dual boot system. BIOS boot order is windows, then ubuntu. I get no grub menu when I boot (which is what I want), and to boot ubuntu I use F12 to select ubuntu. Seems to work fine.
I have two specific questions regarding whether I really have two isolated bootable systems.
(1). If I perform Ubuntu updates, will grub eventually be updated and modify the Windows bootloader? I really don't want that to happen.
(2). I've read that to prevent (1) from happening, one can use Gparted and uncheck the boot and esp flags on the windows efi partition. Is this true and safe to do? I know I'd need to do it every time I plan to perform ubuntu updates (easy to forget), then change it back before reboot or shutdown (easy to forget).
Appreciate comments from those in the know.