I was thinking about moving my dual boot setup (with a Windows 11 partition and a ext4 EndeavourOS partition to EndeavourOS with Btrfs. Would I or should I reinstall EndeavourOS to do the switch to Btrfs? And is it possible with a dual boot?
Warning: This laptop only has one SSD slot, so I can’t really use one drive for Windows 11 and another for EndeavourOS. I would need to partition it.
This is what I would do.
Yes.
Backup your personal data, config files (dot files and dot folders under your home directory) and perhaps /etc ( for systemwide configs).
Use the latest ISO (Cassini), launch the installer, choose replace partition (choose your current EnOS’ partition), BTRFS and the bootloader of your choice (systemd-boot or Grub).
When done, once booted into your system, restore your personal data (and configs on a per case basis when needed).
You can convert ext4 to btrfs but it takes a lot of free disk space and then you would need to manually configure everything.
It is probably easier to reinstall if you don’t have the experience to configure it all yourself.
How would I install rEFInd with no existing bootloader? (I wiped the EFI partition for EndeavourOS and am wondering how to do it with an arch-chroot with an empty fat32 EFI partition.)
Not having any practical experience of rEFInd, I am afraid I couldn’t be of much help.
Here are some Wiki articles to have a look at while waiting for forum members who have experiece of rEFInd to chime in:
https://discovery.endeavouros.com/grub-and-refind/how-to-install-refind/2021/03/
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Refind
You could still install Grub, if you choose to, onto that empty ESP.
https://discovery.endeavouros.com/system-rescue/repair-a-non-booting-grub/2021/03/
https://discovery.endeavouros.com/system-rescue/arch-chroot/2022/12/
Chroot in, mount your empty efi partition and run refind-install