Tips on running multiple distros together on my laptop?
Tips on running multiple distros together on my laptop?
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!!
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One thing that might matter is that if all distros use the same swap partition for hibernation, you shouldn't boot one distro after hibernating another or you might overwrite the saved RAM contents.
If you use different swap partitions or files, you probably should still avoid writing to a partition that belongs to a distro that isn't actually shut down.
Ok, so maybe make a separate partition for each distro and a swap for each distro too? I'm also confused about the bootloader part too. I've never manually partitioned for a distro before, just always did the auto/recommended route.
No need for manual partitioning, just resize the storage partition of the former distro, install automatically, repeat
Thank you!
Oh and just to be sure, I need to use the live iso for the distro in order to resize partitions, is that right?
No, as I said. Install, in the installed OS use the partition manager to resize itself. I think that should work best.
During the live usb installer phase the system is not installed on disk. You can resize the partition of a running system afaik. If not, yes you may need to use a live usb to do that.
But main question, why?
Because I would like three daily drivers, one for each main distro type so I can learn more and explore other types like arch and rhel based, since I'm not knowledgeable on those. But I also want them to be workstations too, for normal usage. Just variety... And of course for learning. I dont just want a live disk to tinker with and thats all. I want these distros to maintain everything I do inside them just like any physically installed distro. Maybe I'm not properly conveying my view idk
I dont see how this is important.
- selinux vs apparmor
- flatpak vs snap vs some package managers with varying names, thats it
- zram vs swap
- some filesystem differences
In the end its all GNU+Linux, the usage is the same. Just use Distrobox and learn how to use that, its so awesome.
You have a full CLI environment for each distro there, just no SELinux, apparmor or systemd.
I would recommend you to try Fedora. Mayve even the immutable spins. Thats the future and you can try a lot anyways like what I descriped.
Thanks again. Im not quite sure what these immutable distros are, I keep hearing about them. Gotta do some researching!
Immutable + atomic. Its similar to Android or IOS. It can be explained like that:
- big parts of the core OS cant be changed easily. Immutable means "you cant change/break it". This also applies to software, third party install scripts, viruses and other things that might break your system.
- atomic: updates are done like this:
- The system is an image, as if you would live boot a usb stick
- When you do an update, the package manager checks on the server for changes, I think it uses git. Only the changes are downloaded.
- rpm-ostree has downloaded the diffs, updated packages basically. Instead of just replacing your local packages, from the full operating system on your machine it builds a new image. Remember, the image is like the live USB or CDROM you can boot and use but not change.
- This new image is staged. This means if you reboot, you will boot into the updated version automatically. Updates go in the background and you will have a working system without any downtime. This is so much faster than for example Windows Updates or even standard Fedora "secure updates".
- atomic means that if something in that process fails, you will simply not get an update. So updates cant break anything.
- But dont forget its Linux and not Android. You can actually install what you want. This means during the "get updates phase" you can not only download "regular update packages" but also any other Fedora RPM package you want. This is called layering, as now this package is always added to your system on every update, as remember on every update your system would get resetted. You can also remove preinstalled packages, a common one on Fedora is the Firefox RPM.
That you can normally install apps is thanks to Flatpak, so you dont need to reboot on every install. The idea is to have a very slim core system and "outsource" as much as possible to Flatpak. This means at the same time, official packages, less work for the distro maintainers, and containerization.
In the future even more packages will be removed as native packages and installed through Flatpak. Buts still a developing technology and important things like
native messagingor USB access (hardware security keys) are still missing.
I think the easier solution would be not to use hibernation - either shut the system down properly or use suspend-to-RAM.
If everything works, the bootloader should be whichever GRUB version comes with the distro you install first and the other distros' installers should just add entries to boot them.
Perfect! Thanks for this info. Sounds much easier. Is there one particular bootloader you think would be BEST for multibooting different distro types? My guess would be a Debian system first probably? and do you recommend I make separate partitions for everything or just install the other distros into the same partition as the first install?
There shouldn't be any significant difference between the GRUB versions that come with different distros, so the order in which you install the distros doesn't really matter.
You can't install multiple distros on one partition, so you need at least one partition per distro.
Ok cool, thanks. Does the bootloader partition get created automatically by the installer or is that something you must do manually? and should each partition for each distro have it's own swap? or just one swap to handle all three?
The first installer will install the bootloader automatically.
It will also create a swap partition unless you tell it not to, and all distros will use all swap partitions by default, so you don't need more than one per disk.
If you don't hibernate one distro and then boot another, sharing a swap partition isn't a problem.
I appreciate the patience and helpfulness. Dont the distro installers automatically create a swap for you? if not, how large of a swap do you recommend and would that just be an empty fat32 or ext4 partition?
A swap partition doesn't have a filesystem - it has its own partition type and doesn't contain files. The installer might create one automatically or it might not - if it asks how large it should be, a good rule of thumb is to use the same size as your RAM.
If that turns out not to be enough, you can create a swap file on a data partition later and if it's too large, you just wasted a few GB but usually that doesn't matter.
Ok so then in this case, create one swap approximately the size of my RAM as I guess the first partition? and then each partition beyond would be just for the distros? i've scene diagrams of efi and bios partitions in the front too, what about those?