Hello all, sorry for such a newbish question, as I should probably know how to properly partition a hard drive, but I really don’t know where to start. So what I’m looking to do is install a Debian distro, RHEL, and Arch. Want to go with Mint LMDE, Manjaro, and Fedora. I do not need very much storage, so I don’t think space is an issue. I have like a 500+ something GB ssd and the few things that I do need to store are in a cloud. I pretty much use my laptop for browsing, researching, maybe streaming videos, and hopefully more programming and tinkering as I learn more; that’s about all… no gaming or no data hoarding.

Do I basically just start off installing one distro on the full hard drive and then when I go to install the others, just choose the “run alongside” option? or would I have to manually partition things out? Any thing to worry about with conflicts between different types of distros, etc.? hoping you kind folks can offer me some simple advice on how to go about this without messing up my system. It SEEMS simple enough and it might be so, but I just don’t personally know how to go about it lol. Thanks alot!!

  • Lvxferre
    6•1 year ago

    All those distros are compatible with grub, and come with their own copies of it. You just need to install your distros, and then when you say “I want THIS ONE to manage boot”, you follow this tutorial. (It’s supposed to help you reinstalling grub after Windows, but it works fine for grub after another Linux instal).

    Or, if you want to be lazy - install last the distro that you want to manage boot, then tell it “screw the current boot, reinstall it”.

    I wouldn’t bother with a bootloader partition. The bootloader runs fine from any distro partition, and it’s small enough so you don’t need to worry about it wasting space.

    swap

    I’ve been running my system without swap whatsoever for quite some time, and it runs fine. But if you’re planning to use hibernation or similar, reserve the same amount of swap space as you have RAM; for example if you have 8GB RAM then at least 8GB swap.

    IMPORTANT: if hibernating a distro, don’t boot another distro, otherwise the hibernation data will get wiped.

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•1 year ago

      Perfect! I will be disabling hibernation in Bios. Also, how exactly do you choose a default bootloader when each distro automatically installs their own? not sure on that process. Or do things like display managers matter? or is Xorg or Wayland pretty much good for all three?

      • Lvxferre
        3•1 year ago

        Also, how exactly do you choose a default bootloader when each distro automatically installs their own?

        I’d probably let Debian or LMDE do it simply because I’m more used to those distros, but you can simply roll a die if you want.

        Or, if you already chose which distro should manage boot, and you want to know how to do it - the tutorial in the link does the trick. I’ll adapt and copypaste a simplified version here:

        how to let the distro of your choice manage boot

        1. Install all distros the way that you want. Make sure that you know in which partition each is installed.

        2. Pick the distro of your choice to manage boot. Let’s say that it’s Foobar Linux, and it’s installed in /dev/sda69. (why 69? Because it’s funny, so you’ll remember to replace it with the right number later on.)

        3. Boot in some live USB. The distro in that USB doesn’t matter.

        4. Open a terminal. Type the following junk in it:

          sudo sudo mount /dev/sda69 /mnt for i in /sys /proc /run /dev; do sudo mount --rbind “$i” “/mnt$i”; done sudo chroot /mnt update-grub

        5. This should be enough. Now restart your computer without the live USB, and your Foobar Linux should be managing the boot.

        And just now I realised that some random distro might decide to take over the boot, once it updates kernel (as it triggers updating grub). So when installing the other distros, look for some configuration that allows you to not install grub in it. (It’s also possible to remove it after the installation of the distro.)

        Or do things like display managers matter? or is Xorg or Wayland pretty much good for all three?

        That’s a per-distro choice, you could go with Wayland for some and Xorg for others. I would probably go with Xorg for all three because it works for me.

        • @[email protected]OP
          1•1 year ago

          Thanks! still a tad confusing for me, but it’s something to work with at least. so you only mount the one that you want to handle the bootloader? what about the storage drive? do I just mount all the partitions to that drive and they will all automatically save to that storage drive? I ought to look up diagrams and such just to see it visually I think. Also, someone mentioned creating the partition first. how would that work out if you’re still running a distro? would rebooting wipe that out and keep the partition in tact and then you work from there? or do you just partition as you go along with each install?

          • Lvxferre
            3•1 year ago

            I think that this might help you, since you said that you mentioned diagrams:

            The numbers after /dev/sda will change depending on how you partition your SSD, as well as their order, and I’m assuming that your username will be “macaroni” for simplicity, but look at the idea. (Also, you don’t need to mount your personal files partition in /home/macaroni/storage. It could be mounted anywhere you want, even /randomjunk/catpix/dogpix/mypartition.)

            If I recall correctly you don’t need to mount the partition with grub (the bootloader), but do check it with other users as I’m not sure of that. Once you update grub in that distribution, it’ll automatically detect “look! There are other systems here! I’ll add them to the boot options!”.

            Also, someone mentioned creating the partition first. how would that work out if you’re still running a distro?

            You should only create, delete or modify partitions of your SSD from a live USB. Never do it while the system installed in your SSD is running. Those partitions will stay even after you reboot.

            I recommend creating the partitions first, then installing your distros. This way you’ll have better control on how to organise your partitions. For example, if you decide to install Arch on the third partition, you can simply say it “hey, you shall be installed in /dev/sda3”, no matter the order that you’re installing Arch vs. other distros.

            • @[email protected]OP
              2•1 year ago

              this is very very helpful, thanks alot. I love lemmy over reddit. you guys are actually kind and helpful here. so I mentioned in other posts, I don’t store a whole lot of things at all and anything important is stored in a cloud. So do I necessarilly need to create a storage partition? can’t I just use storage within each distro partition for trivial stuff like downloads or whatever? I hope that makes sense

              • Lvxferre
                2•1 year ago

                You don’t need to create a storage partition if you don’t want to. You could theoretically reduce that partition table from the diagram to three partitions - one for each distro. It’s up to you, really.

                The problem that I see with that is organisation and security:

                • you’ll likely use one distro more than the other two. That distro’s partition will get full of personal files faster. Eventually you’ll need to juggle files to the other two partitions.
                • you’ll need to remember which system you were using in order to remember where your files are. And since you’ll be juggling files back and forth, you’ll reach a point where you need to search three directories to find a file.
                • if your personal files are spread across multiple partitions, you’ll likely need to mount all of them in all your systems. This means that you’ll need to mount Debian’s and RHEL’s partitions in Arch, Arch’s and Debian’s in RHEL, etc. It’s generally not a good idea to mount partitions with system files unnecessarily.
      • @[email protected]
        1•1 year ago

        Hibernation is an OS feature, so you can’t disable it in the BIOS. You can either disable it in all your distros or simply not use it.

        • Ooops
          2•1 year ago

          Oh, believe me: There are so many messy BIOS and UEFI implementations out there that you can definitely deactivate it in the BIOS for some. Which just introduces even more mess where hibernation triggered on the OS level then fails.

        • @[email protected]OP
          1•1 year ago

          Oh ok thanks. I just coulda swore I saw a hibernation setting in BIOS. That’s another thing, would I have to create a Bios partition? this is a tad more confusing that I thought. Also determining the proper sizes of everything. What about an efi partition? or is that only associated with Windows? I have no clue

          • @[email protected]
            2•1 year ago

            There are no BIOS partitions - you may be confusing the term with the BIOS partition scheme, but that doesn’t matter in this context “BIOS partitions” do exist, but they are irrelevant on modern machines - they are for booting GPT disks on systems that only support MBR disks.

            If you need an EFI partition, the first installer will create one. As for the sizes, the recommendation in the other comment makes sense to me (one ≈60 GB partition per distro, one swap partition and one partition for your personal files that uses the remaining space on the disk).

            • @[email protected]OP
              1•1 year ago

              I mean SHOULD I make an efi partition? I have no clue if I need it or if it’s optional. Simple is better in my case lol. SOO just trying to put it all together so far. first create a roughly 8gb fat32 partition for swap? Then a 60gb ext4 partition for distro 1, then so on with the other two partitions and thats it? how does the storage partition work? what format should that be? and I was reading about mount points and stuff, what ought I know about those?

              • @[email protected]
                2•1 year ago

                If the installer doesn’t automatically create an EFI partition, you can create a small FAT16 or FAT32 partition (a few hundred MB should be enough).

                The swap partition is just a swap partition - that is the partition type you select in your partitioning tool.

                The storage partition can be any format you want. If you don’t need to access it from Windows, just use ext4.

                Mount points are similar to drive letters, but more flexible. You can read these Wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_(computing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fstab

                • @[email protected]OP
                  1•1 year ago

                  Thanks again. So did you mention it’s not really necessary to install an efi partition? Idk if I need it or not? or is it just better safe than sorry, sorta like a swap?

                  • @[email protected]
                    2•1 year ago

                    If you install your first distro without creating any partitions manually, the installer will probably create an EFI partition. Maybe it wouldn’t need to create one on your specific system, but it will probably do it anyway.

              • Lvxferre
                2•1 year ago

                If this is a plain computer (desktop/laptop): I’d simply turn EFI off and call it a day.