[Installation] Dual booting, can't take out drive one

[wormraper]

hey guys, I'm really wanting to install Kubuntu 24.10 when it's gets a wide release next week, but sadly I STILL have a few programs that I need windows for so I'm looking to dual boot.

was going to just grab a second NVME drive to install linux on, but I have run into a snag. Said snag is that I can't (or really won't) remove my windows boot drive as it sits UNDER my Noctua D15 cpu cooler and can't be taken out during installation of linux unless I take off my cooler and possibly my video card to access the m2 slot (and tearing off a cpu cooler and re-pasting just to install a second distro is not on my to do list).

now the issue is that installing Kubuntu through the automated "wipe and install on this drive (as well as manually because of the installation bug) will put the bootloader on the windows EFI folder since I can't take out the other drive...

is there any way around this so I can have my Kubuntu with it's own EFI folder for booting?? I read a few off hand reddit posts that it could possibly work by using parted/gparted to disable the ESP and Boot flags on my windows drive, install, then re-enable them afterwards... but I just wanted to check in and see what my best path forward is.

[claydoh]

Why bother removing the windows drive at all? I don't think I have done this in at least 15 years or so, back in the mbr days and having up to 7 operating systems installed. I also have never done anything such as those rando reddit folks might suggest. I am one of those, so take my experiences as that --my own very numerous experiences.

The trick is to do manual partitioning to create the efi, the / and possibly /home if desired, set the boot flag, set the mount points at /boot/efi/ , root ( /) and /home, and make sure the installer points the bootloader to the second nvme drive.

I know I may be blessed by the FOSS gods, but I have had zero problems sharing windows on the same drive with Kubuntu, or any Linux distro. What can happen, is that a Windows update can sometimes reset the boot order in the bios. This depends on the mother board. I have had one where this happens with almost every Win update, but my old HP SFF boxes it has never happened.



Some people find using KDE Partition Manager from the live desktop session to be a bit easier for setting up the partitions, then run the installer and assign the mount points and boot flags.

[wormraper]

Why bother removing the windows drive at all? I don't think I have done this in at least 15 years or so, back in the mbr days and having up to 7 operating systems installed. I also have never done anything such as those rando reddit folks might suggest. I am one of those, so take my experiences as that --my own very numerous experiences.

The trick is to do manual partitioning to create the efi, the / and possibly /home if desired, set the boot flag, set the mount points at /boot/efi/ , root ( /) and /home, and make sure the installer points the bootloader to the second nvme drive.

I know I may be blessed by the FOSS gods, but I have had zero problems sharing windows on the same drive with Kubuntu, or any Linux distro. What can happen, is that a Windows update can sometimes reset the boot order in the bios. This depends on the mother board. I have had one where this happens with almost every Win update, but my old HP SFF boxes it has never happened.



Some people find using KDE Partition Manager from the live desktop session to be a bit easier for setting up the partitions, then run the installer and assign the mount points and boot flags.

ahhh, I had been told by others that ubuntu/kubuntu's ubiquity installer had a bug where it would auto put the bootloader info in the previously existing windows efi partition, even if you manually tell it to go into it's own newly created efi partition.

the whole "remove the drive" was so that the installer couldnt' ever see that there was another efi partition even there


just looking at your partitions... is there a reason to have a swap partition with ubuntu/kubuntu anymore? I thought they moved to swap files which are a little easier to expand and shrink vs. the partition (although, you have multiple distros on the same device, I could easily see why you'd want a separate shared swap partition that they all could use.

going simple since I'm a single user PC, I'll probably just keep a / partition instead of separate / and /home partitions.

(and sorry for the newbie questions. the last time I was serious into linux was between 2000-2006 and holy crap has Linux come a long way from the old days, trying to get my feet under me again and get rid of daily use of Win 11)

[claydoh]

Ubuntu moved to a new installer, and other Ubuntu Flavours have moved to Calamres, used by a number of distros now. 24.04 Kubuntu now uses it.

It's very similar, but it might have its own quirks or bugs, of course.

That image is just one I stole from elsewhere, since I didn't have to opportunity to use my PC and set up a quick virtual machine with multiple drives.

Yes, swap is usually a file these days, but a partition is needed if one wants to use suspend, if it works.

My main PC runs KDE neon as the daily driver on the nvme with is own EFI partition, and the original Windows install is on a SATA SSD, along with Kubuntu 24.04, both sharing an EFI partition.

To be honest I can't remember if I used manual partitioning for Kubuntu or just used the automatic options, since I'm not at home to check.

I'm also not sure if it is better or not to set up the partitions before beginning the install. Something in the back of my head tells me Calamres might not show an option for the boot loader location option on a blank drive. Hopefully others can chime in. I don't do many fresh installs these days, unless it's a Chromebook.

[wormraper]

Ubuntu moved to a new installer, and other Ubuntu Flavours have moved to Calamres, used by a number of distros now. 24.04 Kubuntu now uses it.

It's very similar, but it might have its own quirks or bugs, of course.

That image is just one I stole from elsewhere, since I didn't have to opportunity to use my PC and set up a quick virtual machine with multiple drives.

Yes, swap is usually a file these days, but a partition is needed if one wants to use suspend, if it works.

My main PC runs KDE neon as the daily driver on the nvme with is own EFI partition, and the original Windows install is on a SATA SSD, along with Kubuntu 24.04, both sharing an EFI partition.

To be honest I can't remember if I used manual partitioning for Kubuntu or just used the automatic options, since I'm not at home to check.

I'm also not sure if it is better or not to set up the partitions before beginning the install. Something in the back of my head tells me Calamres might not show an option for the boot loader location option on a blank drive. Hopefully others can chime in. I don't do many fresh installs these days, unless it's a Chromebook.

ahhhh, so they DID move to Calamres. that means the old bug is gone. I guess the redditors were using outdated info. Thanks for the update.

how is KDE Neon?? I almost went that way cuz I LOVE KDE, but I was wondering how stable it is being that while the base kernel is stable, they're using bleeding edge KDE.

[Snowhog]

how is KDE Neon?? I almost went that way cuz I LOVE KDE, but I was wondering how stable it is being that while the base kernel is stable, they're using bleeding edge KDE.

If you go with the User Edition, you will find it quite nice, IMO. It's what I use.

If you enjoy adventure, trials and tribulations, then:

Testing Edition:

Featuring pre-release KDE software built the same day from bugfix branches. Good for testing. There is no QA. Will contain bugs.

The Unstable Edition:

Featuring pre-release KDE software built the same day from new feature branches. Good for testing. There is no QA. Will contain many bugs.