this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
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Warning: this is definitively doable, but messier than it looks like. I'd recommend you to partition it manually, before installing any distro, like this:
Don't worry too much on getting the space right though - if necessary you can always resize a few partitions after installation. It's a bit of a bother though.
Do not share /home across distros, it's simply more trouble than it's worth. Instead, mount that "storage" partition in each distro, inside your /home/[$username] directory.
Another thing that you might want to consider is virtualisation. Odds are that you won't use a lot of those distros in your everyday, and that you're just curious about their differences. In that case, consider installing one of them, install Virtualbox in it, and then the other distros get installed inside Virtualbox. I'm suggesting that because it'll use overall less space, and make distro management less messy.
Thanks. I do not want to mess around with virtualization; I went down that rabbithole before and got lost and broke stuff lol. I need to do a bit more research and learning before im more confident with virtualization. So how large should the swap be? and what about a bootloader?? Are all three compatible with grub? also how large should the bootloader partition be? thanks, this is all a bit foreign to me.
All those distros are compatible with grub, and come with their own copies of it. You just need to install your distros, and then when you say "I want THIS ONE to manage boot", you follow this tutorial. (It's supposed to help you reinstalling grub after Windows, but it works fine for grub after another Linux instal).
Or, if you want to be lazy - install last the distro that you want to manage boot, then tell it "screw the current boot, reinstall it".
I wouldn't bother with a bootloader partition. The bootloader runs fine from any distro partition, and it's small enough so you don't need to worry about it wasting space.
I've been running my system without swap whatsoever for quite some time, and it runs fine. But if you're planning to use hibernation or similar, reserve the same amount of swap space as you have RAM; for example if you have 8GB RAM then at least 8GB swap.
IMPORTANT: if hibernating a distro, don't boot another distro, otherwise the hibernation data will get wiped.
Perfect! I will be disabling hibernation in Bios. Also, how exactly do you choose a default bootloader when each distro automatically installs their own? not sure on that process. Or do things like display managers matter? or is Xorg or Wayland pretty much good for all three?
Hibernation is an OS feature, so you can't disable it in the BIOS. You can either disable it in all your distros or simply not use it.
Oh ok thanks. I just coulda swore I saw a hibernation setting in BIOS. That's another thing, would I have to create a Bios partition? this is a tad more confusing that I thought. Also determining the proper sizes of everything. What about an efi partition? or is that only associated with Windows? I have no clue
~~There are no BIOS partitions - you may be confusing the term with the BIOS partition scheme, but that doesn't matter in this context~~ "BIOS partitions" do exist, but they are irrelevant on modern machines - they are for booting GPT disks on systems that only support MBR disks.
If you need an EFI partition, the first installer will create one. As for the sizes, the recommendation in the other comment makes sense to me (one ≈60 GB partition per distro, one swap partition and one partition for your personal files that uses the remaining space on the disk).
I mean SHOULD I make an efi partition? I have no clue if I need it or if it's optional. Simple is better in my case lol. SOO just trying to put it all together so far. first create a roughly 8gb fat32 partition for swap? Then a 60gb ext4 partition for distro 1, then so on with the other two partitions and thats it? how does the storage partition work? what format should that be? and I was reading about mount points and stuff, what ought I know about those?
If the installer doesn't automatically create an EFI partition, you can create a small FAT16 or FAT32 partition (a few hundred MB should be enough).
The swap partition is just a swap partition - that is the partition type you select in your partitioning tool.
The storage partition can be any format you want. If you don't need to access it from Windows, just use ext4.
Mount points are similar to drive letters, but more flexible. You can read these Wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_%28computing%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fstab
Thanks again. So did you mention it's not really necessary to install an efi partition? Idk if I need it or not? or is it just better safe than sorry, sorta like a swap?
If you install your first distro without creating any partitions manually, the installer will probably create an EFI partition. Maybe it wouldn't need to create one on your specific system, but it will probably do it anyway.
gotcha! now how would that storage partition work? like do you point each distro to that partition? is that how that works?
Usually you create an entry in /etc/fstab that tells the system which partition should be mounted where. I'd do that in each distro once you have installed all of them.
But how do you know which partition should be mounted wear and Im sorta confused by that statement. Like what do you mean by "where"? Aren't they all on the same hard drive, so wouldn't they all just mount to your drive?
It's similar to how drive letters work in Windows: the partition you installed it on is C:\ and you can assign any other letter to any other partition.
On Linux, the partition you installed it on is / and you can mount other partitions in any empty directory.
I understand. Would I mount all partitions to root? also I just thought about something; what about gpt format? I know that is used for linux but where does that come in? like are ext4 and gpt the same types of things or different types of formats for different things?
You can only mount one partition at one mount point, but any empty directory on one partition can be a mount point for another partition.
GPT is a partition table and is not used for Linux specifically, but on any computer with UEFI - it defines how to find partitions on a disk, but not how they are formatted.
ext4 is a filesystem - formatting a partition with ext4 means creating data structures that tell the OS where to find files and directories in the partition.
Ahh ok I understand the filesystem types but still darn confused about the mount points. So the first distro I should mount to root??? then how could I partition the next distros in empty partitions that don't have directories yet (since theres no distro on them yet). Sorry, just getting a lil confused on some parts
Mount points are specific to one install - for example, you can mount your Manjaro root partition as /mnt/manjaro on Fedora. From every distro's perspective, the partition it is installed on is /.
You seem to be mixing up the locations of partitions and mount points - a partition is somewhere on a disk and a mount point is basically a sign that points to it, and every distro can have different signs that point to the same thing.
Ok I'm following. that doesn't make sense to me to make the mount points for one distro inside another. I dont understand that. In my mind, it seems like the mount points would all be to the bootloader? but again, I dont know much about this stuff lol
You only need mount points in each distro for partitions that you want to be able to access from that distro. If you don't need access to your Arch system files from Debian, don't mount the Arch partition in Debian.
But if you have a partition that you want to access from multiple distros, you don't need to use the same mountpoint in each distro - just like a USB flash drive can be E:\ on one Windows computer and H:\ on another - that is just a name and the files on it are the same.
What?
virt-manager qemu qemu-kvmImportant note: using
distroboxortoolboxyou can run packages of pretty much any distro on your Laptop. I am currently using Ubuntu PPA VLC 4.0 on Fedora Kinoite.So virt manager, KVM, and qemu is the recommendation solution for this? Opposed to other methods like virtual box or gnome boxes or the other various virtualization platforms out there?
Hmm, I use Virt-manager as it supports some things with no GUI in Gnome boxes. Gnome boxes seems nice, but after trying certain things you get to a limit of functionalities.
Kvm ans qemu are always needed.
Gnome boxes has a flatpak, but that one has no usb support for some weird reason.
Really nice idea with the shared swap and storage!
Caveats:
Apart from that, great recommendation!
In the end you can simply delete all partitions except your storage partition, reinstall any distro and mount that partition to
/homeFedora's swap on zram shouldn't pose a problem - at most it won't use the disk swap, but other distros still would.
Encryption is important but I wonder if OP would make much use out of it, given that he plans to bulk store his items in the cloud. The storage partition would be mostly for things "at hand". And if necessary, as you said, some elbow grease lets you have encryption and still access it from all distros.
I don't recommend OP to mount that partition directly to
/homeitself. It's bound to create problems later on due to software in different versions interacting with software that may or may not be present depending on the distro. Mounting it inside some other directory (even inside /home, e.g. /home/username/storage) feels considerably safer.Right you would then have something like
...
What a mess. But if you kinda keep track of what is what (maybe search for the packages
dnfaptyayand so on) it can work