Help Install another distro

ouray3

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On my desktop I've been using only Linux Mint for the last year.
Mint is installed on my 500G SSD. It's using about 20% of the drive.

What I would like to do is install another distro, probably Manjaro
to make the system dual-boot. Is it possible to create another
partition on the existing SSD for Manjaro?
What steps would I do to make this happen?

I'll re-use the existing /home partition which is on a 2TB drive.
What about the current /boot partition?
 


Mint is installed on my 500G SSD. It's using about 20% of the drive.
that's a lot, Mint OS even the heavyweight Cinnamon version only takes up about 18Gb [depending on installation variables] the rest will be your files/ folders and possibly junk,
I have not used Manjaro myself , but most distros give you the option to install alongside your existing distro [this is the simplest option if its available to you from the Iso]

Bwiz
 
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If you are worried that you will make a mistake during installation, you should back up your data first before installing a second distro. You might also want to consider installing and testing Manjaro on a Virtual Machine first before installing it for real.
 
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I'll re-use the existing /home partition which is on a 2TB drive.
What about the current /boot partition?

Be aware that the (hidden) DE config files (from MintOS) in your /home folder will be overwritten by the config of any new Manjaro installation. Better is to make a new /home for Manjaro on the 500G SSD and hard-link your personal document-, photo- and video-folders to the /home on the 2TB drive.
The current /boot partition will be adjusted to contain both boot-loaders to both OS'ses.

Cheers !
 
G'day from DownUnder @ouray3 and welcome to linux.org :)

You could provide us with a screenshot or two taken with GParted open showing the setup of /dev/sda and /dev/sdb (and any others) if you want to give us a picture of your current setup.

Also whether you are on BIOS/MBR or UEFI/GPT if you can.

On a separate issue - if you install Manjaro, it will generate a Grub Menu with itself in the primary partition and Mint in the second spot.

About a month after the install, when a new kernel is introduced with updates that include grub-pc or grub-efi-signed packages, Mint will resume top spot. When that happens, and you try to boot into Manjaro, it will have a Kernel Panic and not operate.

Don't panic, there is a workaround for this, that I can explain when needed.

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

BTW I would a take a Timeshift full snapshot (including Home) before undertaking the exercise.
 
uefi- obviously if as I did. you bought a PC that had Windows10 on it ,and looked at partitions using say gParted then, if you see a efi partition, it pretty obvious you have uefi. But what about if the hd is wiped?

This is one approach to finding out:

Code:
[andrew@darkstar:~]$ sudo  dmidecode 3.0 | grep UEFI              (06-09 09:48)
		UEFI is supported
i got dmidecode package from repo
 
Thanks all for your replies. And yes I do timeshifts daily and will do one right before any partitioning.
I also have automatic rsync scripts to back up my /home files on a file server on my local network.

This is a year old ASRock B450M mobo so it's UEFI.

I'm looking forward to hearing back from you @wizardfromoz

Regards,
Gary
 

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Thanks all for your replies. And yes I do timeshifts daily and will do one right before any partitioning.
Timeshift won't restore partitions if you screw up your partitions because it uses rsync to make snapshots which is done one directory/file level. If you screw up your partitioning you will have to redo the partition that you screwed up by creating a new one that is either bigger or the same size and then restoring a snapshot to that partition
 
I have to scoot for my Aussie evening but thanks for those screenies Gary, I'll take a close look on my tomorrow :)

Wiz
 
I have to scoot for my Aussie evening but thanks for those screenies Gary, I'll take a close look on my tomorrow :)

Wiz
Hi @wizardfromoz, hope you didn't forget about me :)

Some updates from last entry: I decided to buy another SSD (1TB this time).
So I'm thinking of partitioning this SSD into maybe 4 for additional partitions
for future distros.

I also would want to re-partition my 4TB hardrive to make it more friendly for additional distros.
I noticed why I was having problems going over 2TB when I first installed Mint,
it is MBR not GPT. Should we think about converting to GPT?

What I'm thinking is sharing the /home partition for ALL future distros but obviously having
their own / partitions for each distro.

So the final issue I need help on is cleaning up my Mint install. I would like to move the /var
to the / partition. I read some online but I don't want to mess that up, so I could use help.

Cheers,
Gary
 
This is a year old ASRock B450M mobo so it's UEFI.

that wouldn't be definitive enough for me .i've show you how to be definitive using dmidecode but one that would be interesting to see what uoutput you get is:

Code:
ls /sys/firmware/efi



it is MBR not GPT. Should we think about converting to GPT?

MBR -> GPT messy ?

from a fresh start lots of tools/approaches but for gui gParted can create new gpt partition table and partitons. uefi normally uses an esp uefi partion typically at /dev/sda1 or nvme...1 around 100mb to 300 type FAT32
 
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that wouldn't be definitive enough for me .i've show you how to be definitive using dmidecode but one that would be interesting to see what uoutput you get is:

Code:
ls /sys/firmware/efi





MBR -> GPT messy ?

from a fresh start lots of tools/approaches but for gui gParted can create new gpt partition table and partitons. uefi normally uses an esp uefi partion typically at /dev/sda1 or nvme...1 around 100mb to 300 type FAT32

No efi dir under /sys/firmware

only:
acpi dmi memmap
 
Hi @wizardfromoz, hope you didn't forget about me :)

...Oops :oops:, my bad, Gary - taking a look at them this morning.

More coffee

Wiz
 
Gary, in #7 you had doubled up on the screenshots so I removed two of them for clarity.

Did you get a chance to implement @captain-sensible Andy's command of

Code:
sudo  dmidecode 3.0 | grep UEFI

and if so, what was the output?

Wiz
 
No efi dir under /sys/firmware

only:
acpi dmi memmap
thats what i thought - that command is often quoted on web sites to see if your boot system supports uefi , but i think only works if an OS was previously installed uefi mode; yours wasn't
 
i have attached a screen shot of what gParted shows for my humble laptop; its only got one OS vanilla Arch. you might note /dev/sda3 is missing - slackware current was on /dev/sda3 but as said in the Sparks song " my hd wasn't big enough for thr both of them". So i deleted /dev/sda3 and simply stetched /dev/sda4 into the free space. Even doing that can cause problems. I got away with it .




You are going to have to partition so you have that efi partition .So with your current set up you would at least need to :

have a gpt partition table
slice in an efi partition
the efi partition would be the boot partition so your /dev/sda5 would become redundant (i think Chris will confirm)

lets see what Chris comes back with ; i would lean towards a clean install . A single ssd of 2T should be enough for a few OS . i'v only got 60 gig ; have basically all the software i need and still plenty left.

also your swap if i saw it clearly of circa 18gig seems on the heafty side
 

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Cheers Andy :)

Gary, on your reply pane toolbar right of the smiley face is 3 dots and a down elevator button, if you click that you will see "Codes".

Can you, at Terminal, issue the command

Code:
inxi -Fxz

and copy and paste the output to us using the Codes?

If you get something like no command found, then use

Code:
sudo apt-get -y install inxi

and then repeat the command.

inxi -Fxz differs from inxi -Fxs (which you might want to use and save output in a text file for yourself) in that the "z" filters out MAC addresses for you internet connection and removes references to serial numbers, you can try the two options out.

...also your swap if i saw it clearly of circa 18gig seems on the heafty side

Agreed, but we can address that.

Cheers

Wiz
 

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