Hello dear friends of the Rocky Linux Universe!
I have an existing desktop computer with NO other OS except Rocky Linux 8.10 and the following hardware: CPU - Intel i5 11400 ; Motherboard - Asus TUF B560-Plus WiFi ; RAM - 2*16 GB modules (not part of a kit)
Storage:
120GB SSD - circa 2016 - OS is installed here.
640 GB HDD circa 2010 - has 3 partitions.
2 TB HDD circa 2022/23 has 3 partitions.
My motherboard has ability to take two M.2 NVME drives - with speeds upto PCIE Gen 4.0. I have also yet to saturate my SATA ports (3 used out of 6).
Since the SSD on which RL8.10 is installed is VERY old, and has limited space I bought a new 1TB NVME drive. I now need to install another OS and I have multiple options.
A. Using Rocky Linux 9.latest
B. Using Another simple Linux based OS - Fedora/Debian/OpenSuse/
C. Using an Exotic distro - QubesOS/Whonix/Arch/Gentoo/Slackware/BSD variants/
D. Long term aspiration - Linux from scratch (not viable right now owing to lack of time and inability to do complex admin tasks in Linux itself - which is why I seek help from you guys occasionally).
I am debating between option B & C for the new drive. Option A is behind them coz I already have RL 8.10 which I will eventually upgrade to RL9. Even so, I wish to continue using the existing RL8.10 as is, and eventually move my critical files from there, to the new drive. I wish to try out a newer version of Linux. and since I have a LTS kind of version in RockyLinux, I wish to try out a rolling release version. I DO NOT wish to use UBUNTU for the same privacy concerns that I have with MicroSh!t and IBM influenced version of Red Hat/Fedora.
I am looking with a lot of interest at Fedora Workstation (familiarity with RL), OpenSuse Leap (I used openSUse in 2005-08 good memories), Arch (plain vanilla), Gentoo and Slackware. No experience with last three. My questions
It is clear to me that I need a dual boot as I wish to use existing Rocky Linux as my stable working system so which one is most hassle free of the above - to dual boot alongside existing Rocky Linux installation
How should I go about ensuring that all of my drives are accessible to the new distro? Right now, the 640 GB drive shows up in Other Locations - I need to use root password to access it. So I would need the access to my OS drive (which would be default) as well as direct access to the 2 HDDs and 1 SSD.
Please let me know your answers/suggestions.
Thanks!
In case I have not made it clear, the NVME will have only one Linux distro on it at least for now.
So while my system is dual boot, I was wondering if I can just disconnect all other drives (I’d rather disconnect the power to those drives, than disconnecting and mixing existing SATA ports) install OS of choice on the new drive and then once it is up and running, connect power to the remaining drives.
And once the new drive is able to detect all the others (including the existing OS drive and its home) I use the BOOT menu to choose which drive I want to use for booting.
M.2_2 slot (Key M), type 2242/2260/2280 (supports PCIe 3.0 x4 & SATA modes)
The M.2_2 slot shares bandwidth with SATA_2.When M.2_2 slot is operating in SATA mode, SATA_2 will be disabled
In other words, you can have up to one of:
Two M.2 NVMe and 6 SATA devices
One M.2 NVMe, one M.2 SATA, and 5 SATA devices
One M.2 NVMe and 6 SATA devices
You have OS on SSD. If you do boot with EFI, then the ESP (EFI System Partition) is probably on the SSD. The ESP has subdirectory for Rocky and GRUB bootloader in that directory.
If you install Rocky 9 and let it use that ESP, then it will overwrite 8’s GRUB as the “vendor” is same. Other vendors have their own directories and could co-exist on the same ESP.
You should be able to have an ESP on the NVME too. Probably makes more sense anyway.
Either way, when each OS has entry in the motherboards Boot Menu, you can hit the key (F12?) early on boot to invoke the Boot Menu, if you want to select non-default entry. Each entry load corresponding OS’s bootloader from (some) ESP. The bootloaders do not need to know about other OS.
You can later change the default entry, via EFI Setup or with efibootmgr
You can add the filesystems of the other drives into /etc/fstab or configure automounter (e.g. autofs.service) to mount them on-demand. Rocky’s installer lets one do that in its partitioning tool. No idea what the other distros offer.
I do recommend leaving some of the NVMe drive unallocated. That lets you later install additional OS without overwriting what you will install now.
Thanks Jukka @jlehtone
From what I have understood from your post, I should
a. Remove the other drives from the motherboard - including the current RL8.10 SATA SSD and then install independently the new OS on NVME (say, OS1).
b. have some unallocated space on the new NVME to add another OS later (say OS2). This calls for partitioning beyond the default one - I am thinking of having three partitions - one each for OS1 (256 GB))& OS2 (120 GB) and the third being a common data partition for the two (whatever is left of the 1TB)
