1y ago

installing multiple distros on one drive?

im currently dual booting endevouros with windows, and i have a lot of free/unpartitioned space on my drive. can i install another linux distro alongside endevour and windows? i have a separate home partition as well. do i only keep one linux/grub boot partition? im not too scared of nuking everything but id obv rather not. thanks!

26 comments

Sure. After you've installed it, add its entry to your bootloader.
There really isn't any technical limit of how many OSes you can install aside from space. Have 500 Alpine installations if you want. All good.
- 500 Alpine installations? Are you trying to turn their computer into a forest?
  
  Doesn't alpine refer to the part of the mountain above the forest, above the limit of tree growth? So maybe they are trying to deforest OP's computer?
- ok thank you 🙂

Gparted should help you manage your partitions. Be very careful to pick the right partition to format. Also, Windows is known to sometimes mess up dualboots, it thinks it is the only OS.
- thanks. if i never update windows (even if it tries to force me to), is it possible for it to break it ?
  
  In my experience this only happens when (re)installing Windows, not updating. Can be easily fixed via live USB.
  
  I would never ever recommend not updating windows, but if it is maybe just a dedicated gaming OS and you don't use it for internet browsing or anything else, you might be able to get away with it.
  
  Under those conditions probably not.

Containers or VMs sound like a much easier solution. But I guess a good question is, why do you want multiple OSs?
- But I guess a good question is, why do you want multiple OSs?
  Agreed. Is it cool you can do this? Sure.. why not. Is it valuable/useful in any way? No.
  I'm an old grey beard at this point though.. The days of being interested in the latest OS or distro hopping are long loooong behind me.
  
  Out of curiosity, which one did you stick with?

My usual setup is two distros, sometimes also Windows. I use one home partition, one swap partition, one EFI partition (Windows creates one in EFI mode) and each OS its own root partition.
Some people won't recommend sharing a home partition, but it has worked for me for a long time now. Some years ago I'd have an additional data partition, with symlinks from each home folder of each distro for Videos, Documents, Images, etc. Each distro was contained, even home, in the root partition.
Also, you can have several bootloaders in the EFI partition as long as you don't wipe/format it. Usually, you can choose which one to use in the firmware settings.
- whats the advantage of multiple root partitions?
  
  Multiple distros, of course. You really must not share a root partition between distros. Wouldn't even know where one starts or the others end.

You can. Be aware that using one home partition for numerous distros is not recommended because of config files conflict. You can however symlink between home partitions.
- i hadnt thought of that :/

If you're not seeking virtualisation as an option, then I'd recommend the second distro for minimal Arch/Artix/Gentoo/Void/Alpine setup and learn to configure Sway or DWL as your WM.
(Because Wayland is the solution)

Depending on what's your usecase, or what you want to achieve, running different distros on different virtual machines may be the best solution for you.
- thats what im doing right now. its not as sexy as running baremetal, but boy do i love not worrying about bootloaders

26 comments