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Help me Dual boot for the first time [RE: Help me choose my 2nd (Dual boot) Linux distro on my PC as a Linux beginner] (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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After evaluating every comment you left me in the last post and testing every OS via virtual machines, I've decided that my first option when dual booting will be CachyOS, leaving Fedora KDE and endeavourOS as the runner ups. Now I'm at the point where I have to actually do the dual boot. I've found some videos and posts where they show how to do it but I haven't managed to find any case like mine, since I want to go from Linux Mint Debian Edition single boot, to LMDE + CachyOS/Fedora/endeavour. I'm doing this post to ask some questions:

  • Being my case pretty specific, is it the process any different than some other builds like Arch + Cachy, Ubuntu + endeavour, etc., or everytime it's the same process whatever are the OS's I install? Do I have to have in mind anything in particular in my case? Any extra tips?
  • Can I dual boot without having to make a total reset of my actual OS to install it again altogether with the secondary OS? Is it less, equally or more safe/efficient?
  • Do you have any guide in general that you find to be good/useful in this matter therefore I can take advantage of?

Please have in mind I'm a total beginner on these things and they still feel pretty overwhelming to me. So, sorry if I ask something dumb and thank you very much in advance!!

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[–] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

if it's going to be on a separate SSD, it should be pretty straightforward: insert live USB for your secondary OS, go through its installer and be careful which SSD you select for it to install on (I recommend backing up all your important data before any procedure like this, just incase you make a mistake or something weird happens). and then you just need to make sure your bootloader knows about both OSes. the installer might automatically detect your existing OS and configure your bootloader to know about both. if not, you might have to update your grub config file after the installation is complete.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    I'll look into that. Though I don't understand the last part. Can I go grub for LMDE and Limine for CachyOS or do I have to choose one? I understand you described it in case we were going with Grub for both. Is it with Limine similar? I don't even know if what I'm asking makes any sense. Thanks and sorry in advance haha

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  • [–] 1 point 20 hours ago

    well, I just assumed Grub because in my experience, almost all Linux systems use Grub. I've never actually heard of Limine.

    as for using different bootloaders for each operating system, that doesn't really make sense to me. it's technically possible to install different bootloaders on each SSD (and that might be what the installer does by default, if it doesn't detect the presence of the existing operating system), but the point of a bootloader is to choose which operating system you want to boot, so if you set up a separate bootloader for each operating system, then you'd need a way to choose which bootloader you want to boot.

    there actually is a way to do that, on most computers at least, you can use the BIOS/EFI boot menu to select which bootloader you want to boot. but I don't think this approach really offers any advantages over having them share a bootloader.

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