Installing another distro alongside Fedora?

Ask Fedora
1

Sorry if these are really basic questions, but I’ve had a really hard time finding any dual booting information that isn’t aimed at using Windows, and I’ve never done a dual boot setup before.

I want to get a second SSD for my laptop and install a different distro on it specifically for gaming. Can I simply plug in the new SSD, install the new OS to it, and then switch to it by either changing the boot priority in the BIOS or using the script “sudo efibootmgr -n [boot number] reboot”? Or do I have to run commands to set things up with GRUB or whatever?

Also, one other thing; after the secondary OS is installed to the new drive, can my main Fedora install access the new drive for extra storage? Or would I need to set up a specific shared partition for that to work?

2

In general, yes it is quite possible to do as you are considering.

There are some caveats that must be considered.

  1. Most distros are not dual boot friendly and when using grub only one (fedora) should ever be used to manage booting. Fedora automatically probes for additional installed OSes, while most others do not. The last OS to perform an update to grub normally tries to take control of booting. Disabling grub updates on the second OS will assist in making this relatively easy.
  2. Of course both OSes must use the same boot method (normally UEFI)
  3. Accessing a storage area on the second drive from fedora simply requires that the space be partitioned and then fedora must be able to mount the file system on that partition for access.
  4. Be very careful what file systems are shared between the OSes. In general pure storage is not a problem, but the risk is relative to what each OS uses that space for.

A good thing to assist newer users would be to read and keep as a reference one of the many books/web sites for using linux.

3

Thanks for the reply. So, if I understand right I need to stop the new OS from making changes to GRUB? Is there a setting in a config file I’d change to do that? And will that cause issues when the new OS updates its kernel?

4

I use Fedora on my desktop for gaming and it works very well for me.
You might want to try out gaming on Fedora before going to the trouble of installing a second distro.

5

The way I would do it, is to install each system on separate disks, and use the uefi boot menu to select which system to boot. That avoids a lot of complications with respect to secure boot. However, this way seems to be very unpopular, and most users would insist on using the grub menu to select the other system.

To enter the uefi boot menu you could use

  • Use the command systemctl reboot --firmware-setup
  • Select the “UEFI Firmware Settings” entry in the grub boot menu
  • Use efibootmanager -n ... to select which entry to boot next

The Gnome boot menu could be enhanced to select the other system on the next boot.

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6

Already have done. It’s not bad for it or anything, but I much prefer gaming on an OS that’s focused entirely on games like SteamOS is, especially since my laptop isn’t super powerful so I want as little running in the background as possible while I’m gaming.

Also my SSD is running out of space, so I needed to add a new one for putting games on anyway.

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7

Thanks, that sounds simple enough. So I just install the new OS to the new SSD as normal, then use those commands to boot into one or the other?

8

No configs that I am aware of, but depending upon the particular OS you could block grub updates – possibly even remove grub from the OS and rely on fedora grub to find and select the kernel to boot.

That depends upon the OS. I have not tried SteamOS so cannot speak for it, but most do try to update the boot loader (grub) when the kernel is updated. You may have to experiment with that.

You also would want to have the fedora grub boot menu visible with each boot and that is easy to do with sudo grub2-editenv - unset menu_auto_hide.
To hide the grub boot menu again use sudo grub2-editenv - set menu_auto_hide=1

9

Another option is to use a dedicated boot manager. The simplest, and maybe also the most convenient, option is to install it to a USB flash drive (or if your laptop has an unused SD/micro SD card slot).

Just a few of the many available options:

SystemRescue is a Linux Live CD/USB distro, but its boot menu offers an option to boot from local storage. If more than one OS is found, a menu of choices is presented.

Ventoy’s boot menu offers the option to boot an existing OS from local storage.