why would you though

Cuz some don't want to use a VM? Not a crazy concept​@@splits8999

@@splits8999 Because it's fun

@@herkatron makes sense

@@splits8999 I want to distro hop, but I also want to keep a different installation of a distro around that I can keep going back to.

100% agree, thank you for this guide!👏👏

Why?

@@utubepunk what ?

Yes it's a very handy tool to keep on a USB stick for working on partitions and also doing repairs when things go wrong. Glad you found it helpful!

@@Doriandotslash Can't you just keep on creating VHDs like for an example you can call the first VHD Apple and another one elementeryOS and Android, and so on and Install all of them in there apocopate VHDs and choose the install on hard drive option, Will creating VHD slow down PC?

@@DanielBrosman08211986 Well, if you're just using virtual machines then yes you can create as many as you want. But this is for installing on hardware in different partitions.

@@Doriandotslash Waiting for a video guide for Virtual KVM Whonix. If possible please consider.

@@Doriandotslash I tried Ventoy to use different ISO’s loaded onto one USB stick. It then shows its startup menu system which can be modified with a tool it comes with that writes a properly formatted .json file: all kinds of choices, or it can be very simple. The tool ran a bg-service on windows, and the editing that produced the finished .json was done in a web-browser looking at a local page interacting with the service to rewrite the .json file (instructions, essentially.). It’s worked with any of the bootable ISO images I’ve tried so far. I think it would work with gparted and Hirens ISO’s. I’ll be trying those next. The EFI info you present is filtered into usability, invaluable, thanks!

Thank you too!

Glad I could help, thank you!

Thanks! Yes things are fine. Just been busy with real life since my 2nd child was born and took a break.

@@Doriandotslash That's awesome... Totally justified, congratulations!!!

Thank you too

Great to hear!

Hope it helps you out! Cheers

Thanks for the tip.

Glad to hear!

Never heard that one before :)

Great to hear!

He mentions it in the video for both Manjaro and ubuntu

It works fine if you install Windows first. Then create a create boot partition for the different versions of Linux you will install. Windows just insists on being first.

From my understanding, it's not strictly necessary anymore, but that used to be the preferred setup. Same with swap partition. If you just choose a partition and set it to root ( / ), the distro installer will automatically create a /home/ folder and ask about swap file size. I suppose it's advantageous to create one swap partition and then share that partition with other linux OS'es, because only one at a time will be using it..

I actually really dig this approach. In a weird way it has that "retro-future" vibe too! That chunky ka-thunk-click! into the slot when replacing drives would be neat, like the tactile feeling of VHS or ZIP-drives without the crappiness LOL. That's a pretty cool idea! I'm glad you shared it! :)

@@ArcangelZero7 Thanks. And you're welcome :) It has worked quite well, but I am beginning to see some issues. As Linux starts to use UEFI there seems to be a bit of confusion on start up. It doesn't stop it from booting but it does display errors. The UEFI does fancy things like display the distros logo on the motherboard's boot screen, and I think that this is where the error is coming from. Not an issue on a legacy BIOS, but as distros move away from BIOS and towards UEFI it could be the beginning of real issues. I'm not sure and it is something that I need to research as other things like TPM might go wrong as well. But for now, even if you completely wreck a distro, just hit eject, slot in a fresh copy, and press play 🤣

Ah yes that's basically doing the same thing but with the cmd prompt. Good to point out though thank you!

Look at installing rEFInd. It’s a boot loader that will boot whatever is on your system. It can be installed from within Linux.

You need to update Grub for it to show the other OSes installed. Ubuntu for example, open a terminal and type "sudo update-grub" and let it finish. It will find the other options and add it to the Grub menu. Just make sure Ubuntu is selected as your default UEFI entry in your BIOS settings, and it should show all the distros installed on your system so you can pick whichever one you want to boot into. If you want to test out distros without using a virtual machine, you can always make sure you're downloading LiveISO files so you can boot off of the USB stick and test it out on hardware.

@@Doriandotslash Hey Dorian, I have a similar question! I have Pop!_OS installed on one of my SSDs and I currently use it as my main system. I use the second drive just for storage, but I want to make a partition there and install Arch. As far as I understand, I can use the existing EFI partition and configure systemd-boot in a way so it sees the other system on my second drive, but I lack the knowledge to pull this off correctly and most articles I can find focus on dual-booting with Windows. So, that's my question: how do I do that? I have used Arch before and I'm pretty familiar with the normal installation process. I just need to know what I should do differently with this set up in mind.

@@noctiflorous1337 You can reuse the EFI partition, and Arch will just installed a GRUB bootloader in it. Then you can select which bootloader you want to run when your system boots up by pressing whatever key your system uses to select a boot device (F11, F12 etc). If you select Arch's GRUB bootloader as the default, then PopOS will also be in that list. Configuring systemd-boot isn't hard if you follow the wikis, but using Grub is much easier as it will automatically detect other distros when it is updated.

@@Doriandotslash thank you for replying! I had a problem with GRUB when I tried to install Arch for the first time. I just couldn't make it work on NVMe. Once I tried using systemd-boot, everything worked fine. Maybe I missed something, I'll look into it more. Otherwise, your solution sounds like exactly what I need.

Short answer : Yes you can, but you MAY have issues. Long anser: I would advise against sharing /home unless both distros are using the same desktop environment that are the same version, otherwise you could have conflicts between configuration settings in your /home directory. However, if using KDE in Kubuntu, and your other distro uses another DE like Xfce or Cinnamon, then it might be fine because they won't be sharing configuration files for the desktop. Stating that though, any programs you use might have shared configurations that do things differently with different versions as well. Many people do this and have no complaints. But my advice would be to ensure you backup your /home before trying it just in case.

Thanks! Yes but as long as you always use the bootloader that works with everything then you should be fine.

That's complicated. You could probably change the label fairly easy, but even if you change config files within Ubuntu to ensure if gives a different name when you update grub, there's a good chance that your changes will be overwritten with a system updates. This means the next update that triggers a grub update will likely put things back to how they originally were before you changed them. Now I haven't actually tried this to be sure so it might be worth experimenting with if you're curious. As I said in this video, I think this is something that distro devs need to address. Installing distro B and having a bootloader entry called distro A isn't right. In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a rule that if you're using a distro as a base for your own distro, you are required to remove all branding of the original distro which includes any mention of the name and any logos. This should also mean the name it labels the bootloader with.

Yep, that's another way of doing it as well!

It’s a common issues. Sometimes it just doesn’t work that way.

@@Doriandotslash Well, I've finally installed Manjaro Xfce, and it boots from its own grub, AND Linux Mint's grub. I did initially have a problem booting from Mint, but that was because in running 'update-grub', it added the Manjaro entry incorrectly. So I ended up editing the 'grub.cfg' file to correct the error, and now it boots up fine from there.

That's what I would like distros to start doing. Create their own EFI entries, insteady of reusing the existing layouts from the distros they're derived from. It's a lazy way of doing things to be honest, and wouldn't be that much work for them to do.

So you're saying you want to install Linux in another partition on the disk to have Chrome installed? That's definitely possible. But it won't be a D: drive, it will be a Linux partition. Windows can't read Linux file systems.

I’ve had Windows 10 and 9 Linux distros on my laptop at the same time. It’s not a problem!

@@Doriandotslash YAY!!! I have enough room for 10, so that may be what I do. Today is the Winter Solstice, so Happy Solstice!

@@Doriandotslash I hope someone will read this and avoid the nightmare I've had for the last 48+ hours: netinstall may be far harder than standard iso - though both may be the same except one being live and therefore offering more help for internet connection. Some people online are saying they had trouble getting WiFi even though they used non-free netinstall. I also had no WiFi that way and, without WiFi, you cannot connect your other packages or even use sudo or very basic commands. However, I tried again with full Debian XFCE (free, not non-free) live .iso and have WiFi. Frustrated, but next I will try (free) standard live .iso. At least for the the lighter .iso for Debian, I could use my 4 GB flash drive (another limitation I had was having enough flash drives that booted - one only booted if CSM was enabled). I hate Linux right now...why not just call netinstall and standard the same thing - pick one - ***if*** they are truly the same danged thing?! And, some are saying they are really just a server...so call it server. Linux is so frustrating and all-over-the-place. I now seem to have a few grubs and all with incorrect listings, it seems.

I always try a distro in a VM first. I'll use it for a while, and if I really like it, then I install it on hardware. When I install on hardware, I'll typically keep using the same bootloader and just update grub so that the new distro shows up as a selection.

@@Doriandotslash Good system. I always have something on the go in a VM. Live and learn. :)