Installing Multiple Distros of Linux in multi-boot situation

[decatur-linux]

I have a 160-Gb drive that has Win2K in its own 40-Gb partition; the rest of the disk is unformatted and free.

I want to set up partitions so that I can install multiple distributions of (K)(U)buntu. As an example, I would like to install Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and/or Kubuntu 6.06 LTS and, in a separate partition, Kubuntu Feisty Fawn. I have several questions.

(1) Rather than having separate partitions for Ubuntu / Kubuntu would I be better off with ONE partition and install both DESKTOPS?

(2) I want to manually partition the remaining 120-Gb of the drive so that I can have a /boot partition, a /home partition, a /swap partition, etc. Since the distros that I plan to install are so similar, can I share partitions among the various distros? In other words, can I use the same /home partition for each of the versions of K/Ubuntu? Can I use the same /swap partition and the same /boot partition? If so, how should I set up the various partitions? I don't mean how should I PHYSICALLY create the partitions: I know how to do that. I mean what partitions do I need to set up so that all two/three distributions can co-exist, but share what partitions I can.

(3) If instead of Feisty Fawn I wanted to install Knoppix or SuSE or Red Hat (a disto sufficiently different from K/Ubuntu) what problems could I expect? Could I share partitions with the "foreign" distribution.

(4) I tried to install Kubuntu 6.06 in a dual boot with Win2K today, and when i got to the point of partitioning the drive I had three choices:
a. Partition the entire drive (which would defeat the dual-boot and wipe out Win2k);
b. Partition the largest contiguous space (or something like that); or
c. Manually partition the drive.
I tried (b) and it used the rest of the drive to install Kubuntu successfully. Then when I tried to boot to Windows on restart, it showed me the GRUB menu as it should have, but I got the Blue Screen Of Death. It let me boot into Linux, so it must have something to do with the boot manager. Where do I start in straightening out this mess?

I would appreciate any guidance regarding the above 4 questions. TIA.

[sky]

Re: Installing Multiple Distros of Linux in multi-boot situation

Hi,

For me if you install a version of kubuntu (for example edgy) you don't need to reinstall ubuntu on another partition but you should install only the metapackage.
For your partitions, I would share only /home and swap. /boot is quite specific to the system afaik. Anyway, if you want to use system to disk when switching between distro, you should have then all partitions separated, because if the system which was sleeping see that you moved (just read even) one of it partitions, it will go to fsck and read only... Really a pain.
After if you don't need this, you can keep the /home and swap for all distros, and it shouldn't hurt, just you will need to use the same version of kde and/or gnome (at least as I think it would be normal)

Cheers

[Detonate]

Re: Installing Multiple Distros of Linux in multi-boot situation

I don't have windows on this computer, but I do have multiple distros on it. I have one distro that is my production stable distro where I do most of my work. At this time, it is Ubuntu Edgy. I usually have one, or two different distros on the same hard drive with no problems. The only partition I share is the swap partition. sometimes you have to get a little adventurous editing the grub.lst or grub.menu file but it's not really a problem. If you want to share a partition between the two distros I would suggest setting up a seperate partition just for that. When installing other distros, watch out for the file system, for example Fedora defaults to LVM2 and that can be a challenge for mounting the partition from another distro. It's really great to have more than one distro, with each distro mounting the file system of the other. If you screw something up, say an xorg.conf file or something, you can merely boot to the other distro and fix it.

[dibl]

Re: Installing Multiple Distros of Linux in multi-boot situation

Yes -- what Detonate said.

I have one IDE/PATA drive, and 2 SATA drives. IDE has E-live, first SATA has Win XP and a big "/home - BACKUP" partition, and the other SATA drive has Kubuntu. The Grub list has all 3 OS's. When I got in trouble with Feisty Herd 4, K3b was not working, and I couldn't make a new ISO CD with the Herd 5 image. Guess what? The little CD burner in E-live is wonderful, and saved the day.

In Win XP are the Intel BIOS utility that I can use to overclock my CPU. There is nothing in Linux for that (at least not that I'm qualified to touch). Also Motorola Phone Tools -- I have never made Moto4Lin see my cell phone file structure.

You need choices -- this is a good way to have them.

[jankushka]

Re: Installing Multiple Distros of Linux in multi-boot situation

swap is something that can be shared no problems.
/boot you can also share (i.e. 1 grub, 1 grub's menu.lst...a lot easier).
i also share /usr/local/mmp which includes movies, music, pictures.
that's something that is distro/os independent, isn't it?
desktop envs and many applications write config files and directories in users' home dirs.
so, sharing /home is ok, while sharing actual user accounts may or may not be straightforward.
/tmp is another good candidate (it normally gets reset at boot, so...).
but it really depends on how you use it.
i use it a lot.
stuff i download goes there first and only moved elsewhere if i need to keep it.

i reckon finding the right size for each partition is the most difficult bit.
i normally make /boot 100mb and swap twice as big as RAM.

hope this helps.