Been working on this for several days now, it should keep me occupied for awhile. It is surprising on how alike and also how different each are, the big treat has been LXLE. Probably the most Windows like Distro I have used, as for as Windows users like. Here we go, would be glad to respond if someone else wants to try this.
I don’t have to dual boot - I’m fortunate to have a whole bunch of devices to install sole boot os’s on (and most of them are SSD too) - I tried Mint XFCE recently, and previously “eLive” (could a distrbution be filled of more nagware??? their neediness turned me right off - given the amount of glitches - who’d pay for nagware with extra glitchware?) … was looking for a 32 bit distro for my Samsung N150 Atom netbook…
I like the look of that mate desktop - so I might revisit Mint Mate on the netbook - thanks!
My recomendation about eLive : avoid it like there’s a pandemic… good luck to them - but constantly nagging during a bug ridden installation for $$$ on a half-arsed unready platform that feels like pre-Alpha? GTFOOH!
sda2 is Ubuntu ---------- 960 MB used — gigs to install 8.12
sda5 is Zorin ------------- 910 MB used — ||||||||||||||||||||| 13.04
sda6 is Mint Xfce ------- 465 MB used — |||||||||||||||||||||| 6.15
sdsa7 is Xubuntu ------- 465 MB used — |||||||||||||||||||||| 6.66
All 4 systems share Home and swap. The SSD is UEFI and all 4 system show up on the grub menu. I use this disk for testing. My production system is on it’s own SSD and runs Linux Mint Cinnamon.
I included the disk space used for ‘/’ and memory used value (rounded) from the Top command to compare. Very little modification of installs.
I tried that once but could never get it to work. Does grub write to the /dev/sda1, and why the separate /home? Why not put /boot/efi/, swap, and /home as /dev 1,2,&3? I guess you would not want to share any of your knowledge and or procedures. This is what Linux is about sharing. Cool job.
No, only one /home. All four distro share the same /home and swap.
Looking back, if I had plan this out, that’s what I probably would have done.
Well, I consider myself still new to Linux with an awful lot to learn. I have a long history with mainframes and have used Windows for years, but only about 2 years with Linux.
Here is what I did.
Formatted the SSD to GPT to make sure it was not in MBR format.
Then I went into BIOS to switch rom to use UEFI instead of Latency.
I used my Mint Cinnamon system to d/l the different ISO’s and to create the USB boot drive. Cinnamon has an option on the pull down (or right click) menu to create the USB drives w/o d/l’ing any other software.
During the install of each Distro, I selected “Something Else” to place the “/” partition and to re-use (except 1st install) /home and swap.
I did not do anything with grud. It just work. After each install, the new Distro showed up on (added to) the menu.
----- That’s how I remember the way I did it. I still have room on the SSD for 2 or 3 more Distros.
I thought GPT required UEFI, but wasn’t sure. I have my W10 booting in legacy mode, and really have no use for UEFI, it was just another way for MS to control, what I wanted for my PC. I still run XP, every now and then for some older games, and it just does not like GPT. So I guess MBR and the four partitions is what I will be using. I do appreciate your knowledge share.
Like you, I had no use for (nor had I used) UEFI running Win 7 and then updating in place to Win 10. One day, I commented on this board to someone having trouble with UEFI as to why are you using that(!)? Another member was kind enough to point out to me the GPT and UEFI was the current & recommend standard. It turned out I was the one behind the times. And yet, I feel like I still do not fully understand it.
Yes, that is true!!! But some of my older software I still use will only run on XP. I am currently working on an older XP computer, it will be setup and only used to run my XP software, it will also be setup to run Mint Mate. I can then start using W10 with UEFI and use Linux in a VM.
This is now my typical partition setup for multi-booting Linux. When I was into distro-hopping it usually had 3 different OSs on it. Only swap is shared, they all have their own /home
Now I just have 2 systems on the machine the screenshot is from. This is not the machine I have been working on the last couple days. This is another Lenovo laptop, just slightly newer.
This one has Mint 19.3 on sda1 and sda2. Debian 10.4 is on sda5 and sda6. I have decided to keep this installation of Debian and replace Mint 19.3 with LMDE4. As soon as I finish setting up the new systems on the old laptop, the new laptop will be my next project.
Basically I like having each distro with separate /home, because it is easy to replace the operating system and keep /home basically the way it is. I just go in from root on the other OS, then delete all hidden files and folders, except my .conkyrc file, gotta keep tabs on my temperatures, and skip formatting on that partition. Works for me.
on the netbook - thanks!
