Have two Linux on One computer

Wike1970

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Hi

I would like to ask if One has two Hard drives, can one have two different Linux on the same computer? I would like to have both Linux Mint and ElementaryOS on the same computer. My desktop PC has two Hard drives in it. One is a WD 500Gb and the other one is a Samsung 250Gb. I like them both. I have plans to remove both Hard drives from it and replace it with a SSD soon. But I haven't decide when I plan to do so. But right now I would like to know if One could have Linux Mint on the WD hard drive and ElementaryOS on the Samsung. There is one odd thing. The computer says that the Samsung has this as it's ID: SDA while the WD has this as it's ID: SDB. I don't know why it is like this. That is because I thoght the WD was the first hard drive and the Samsung was the second one. Both hard drives are hooked up on different SATA channel. The motherboard has two SATA connector which is called Channel 1 & Channel 2. I thoght the WD was on channel 1 and the Samsung was on channel 2. But I seems to wrong in this. It seems that the Samsung is on channel 1 and the WD is on channel 2. I don't know if this is important. But I still would like to have two different Linux system on it? Is there any way to so this? And how does one do it?

Yours
Christer Wickman
 


I have had up 4 Linux OSs on one (1) drive. Your partition is the key. Primary was for EFI, extended partition divided into whatever I choose to run; Kali, Linux mint, Ubuntu, etc. Hope this may help.
 
i've never done it with 2 hd's but if i were, then i think i would install grub to the hd, which is first in the boot priority and that the 2nd OS (last to be installed ) would be installed to hd with first boot priority.

then use of os-prober
update-grub


probably have to disable fast boot


certainly worth a go having two linux os on two hard drives and it should work .try and be uniform both uefi mode


this is a good read https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub-2.html

also : https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/grub.html#Multi_002dboot-manual-config
 
Last edited:
I am sorry I forgot to tell that when I start it I get a menu where it says "Linux Mint 20.1 XFCE", "Flag Linux Mint 20.1 XFCE" and last "Windows 10". The only odd thing is there shouldn't be any Windows 10 since I formated the WD 500Gb where Windows 10 was on. I think it reading the second HD and I haven't formated it for Linux. So it is still readed as a Windows 10 HD.

Yours
Christer Wickman
 
I am sorry I forgot to tell that when I start it I get a menu where it says "Linux Mint 20.1 XFCE", "Flag Linux Mint 20.1 XFCE" and last "Windows 10". The only odd thing is there shouldn't be any Windows 10 since I formated the WD 500Gb where Windows 10 was on. I think it reading the second HD and I haven't formated it for Linux. So it is still readed as a Windows 10 HD.

Yours
Christer Wickman
Is that what your bios is telling you?
 
No the BIOS is American Megatrends BIOS. And this menu comes up after the BIOS screen has showen. I think the menu screen is GRUB. I am not sure why this menu screen comes up, because when I install Linux Mint 20.1 XFCE I told it remove everything from WD HD. Since it was the one that hade Windows 10 on it. But since I didn't format the Samsung HD to Linux I think Linux Mint thinks that there is a Windows on the computer. Which it shouldn't be any Windows on it. Right now I can't take any picture of the menu screen so I show it, since it is very late here. I will send a screenshot of the screen tomorrow so everyone can see what it shows. Is that okay?

Yours
Christer Wickman
 
Hi.

This is the screen that shows up after the motherboard screen shows up when I start the computer. The computer is hooked up through HDMI. The GPU is a ASUS GeForce GT 610. I hope this will show as good as my smartphone camera can take pictures. Everything is in Swedish. But translated it says "Linux Mint 20.1 XFCE", "Flag Advance Linux Mint 20.1 XFCE" and the last item is "Windows 10".

Yours
Christer Wickman
 

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@Wike1970 , G'day :)

On the Dell Inspiron in front of me (256 GB SSD and 2TB HDD, with a USB 3.0 mains-powered WD MyBook 4 TB hooked to it)...

I am running 9+29+27=65 Linux Distros.

So short answer to

...can one have two different Linux on the same computer?

...is YES. :)

I have to leave for my evening in Australia but will be back tomorrow.

Can you share with me from Ulyssa Xfce's Terminal, the output of

Code:
ls /sys/firmware/efi
 
and
 
sudo fdisk -l

?

Those are both lowercase l for Lima.

Cheers and nite all

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz
 
Looks like there is still a Windows partition on sda1.

Do run those commands for out Wizard so we can see the partitions.
 
I have a 250 GB Samsung nvme with Manjaro installed, a 1 TB Seagate with Debian and a 500 GB WD with Linux Mint on it and my rig runs great!
 
Looks like there is still a Windows partition on sda1.

Christer whatever you do, do not try to remove that /dev/sda1 for now.

Before you do anything else, you should familiarise yourself with Timeshift, which ships installed on your Mint, and take a full snapshot, so that you can roll back your system if anything goes wrong.

You can read about Timeshift here

https://itsfoss.com/backup-restore-linux-timeshift/

or here

https://www.linuxliteos.com/manual/tutorials.html#timeshift

or read my Thread here and ask questions there

https://www.linux.org/threads/timeshift-similar-solutions-safeguard-recover-your-linux.15241/

Wizard
 
Hi

I decide to put in ElementaryOS on the 250Gb, by doing so the Windows 10 optionen was removed. I did fond it a bit odd since the 250Gb HD was only formated with Windows 10. It didn't have any Windows 10 on it. I think Linux is more fin to use then Windows.

Yours
Christer Wickman
 
Hi

I decide to put in ElementaryOS on the 250Gb, by doing so the Windows 10 optionen was removed. I did fond it a bit odd since the 250Gb HD was only formated with Windows 10. It didn't have any Windows 10 on it. I think Linux is more fin to use then Windows.

Yours
Christer Wickman
How Elementary running so far?
 
Well I have had No problems with installing. But I had two problems with it, but I found a fix for one of it. ElementaryOS doesn't like to run "*.deb" files. But through Q&A I found a way to get run them again. The second problem is a thing call "ImageMagick" I try get installed on ElementaryOS. But it didn't allow me to install it. And I try every way I could. But didn't like it at all. Here is also odd, the GPU on this computer is a GeForce GT 610. Well when check with Nvidia for drivers for it said this versionen was best for it version 390.67. But when I installed on it. The drivers was not that version. The version that I got installed was version 390.141, which I find is a bit odd. Even Linux Mint uses this version too. I am not sure why it is like this.

Yours
Christer Wickman
 
yes it is possible you can have 2 and more linux distros on a single hdd by booting through usb to the partitions you created for that specific distribution
 

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