Hello, I am about to install EOS on my laptop, I have a single drive system (SSD) and I will be installing EOS alongside windows(need it for office) on it.
I researched and learned about MBR, GPT etc., disabled secure boot, decrypted my drive, disabled fast startup.
I have a single efi partition on my system, and i want to know what precautions should i take to not mess up my EOS installation, as i have heard windows deleting some boot info during updates in EFI, and ruining linux. My questions are as follows:
How do i make sure that my windows and EOS do not create errors for each other, as i will be switching between them multiple times in a day?
What should be my swap partition size and should i even create it?
If possible, then can anyone please tell me about maintainance of EOS, i prefer long term stability, so what should i do to achieve that?
I AM REALLY REALLY DOUBTFUL ABOUT THIS BOOT PARTITION THING, I READ A LOT BUT STILL CANNOT GET IT IN MY HEAD (sorry for caps)
Thank you
Its middle of the night here, so i will be replying probably after 13 hours, thanks again to anyone who replies and shares their knowledge with me.
If you choose systemd-boot, EOS will detect that the existing EFI partition is too small and create a second, dedicated EFI partition for EOS. If you choose grub, it will share the same partition. Occasionally, Windows will mess it and you will need to manage that. In some cases, it is just a matter of changing the default boot entry, in more extreme cases, you will need to reinstall grub.
Unless you need suspend-to-disk(hibernation), I would not create a swap partition. I would either use a swapfile or zram/zswap.
Hey, thank you for responding, A lot of my doubts cleared, thanks to you.
Would you suggest systemd boot? I think you would probably, systemd seems the better option to me.
Thank you for the post on maintainance, really insightful and helpful.
Should i go with LTS kernel during install (stability is in the name lol )
What boot partition?
It was a weird confusion for me because i was unable to understand how bootloader will work and differentiate OSs etc, but i read about it and now its clear.
I would. However, I am a systemd-boot advocate so take that advice with a grain of salt.
The simple truth is that either boot loader will work fine and neither is perfect.
I would install both the linux-lts kernel and the linux kernel. That way if something is ever wrong with one of them you still have the other to boot off of.
I see, thank you for the suggestion.
I just finished reading up on your post about maintainance, really good, also you are quite humorous. Thanks for the help.
My doubts are cleared now, and i can proceed wit the install, will surely post it here, when i am done.
Hey dalto, sorry to disturb you again, i went ahead wirh installation, but system just won’t boot into EOS, i installed it without any problems, but when i start, i do not get any option to boot into EOS, here is a photo from gparted
I used replace method after creating an ext4 partition by the name of EOS in gparted.
I selected systemd boot
I dont think it was booted in legacy mood.
While flashing usb, i selected the option of GPT Partition scheme with target system UEFI (non csm)
I cannot see any linux entry in my boot menu, and windows still recognizes it as unallocated space meanwhile when i use eos on liveusb, then i can see that it is not unallocated, but has EOS on it, but i just cannot boot.
systemd-boot would not have installed with a EFI partition of 260MB. It would have created a new partition which I don’t see in gparted. Unless you took that screenshot before installing.
Can you boot off the ISO and share the output of sudo efibootmgr
This was the key to fixing this, during the first install, systemd was not installed in a 250 mb efi partition.
So to fix it, i did manual partitioning by creating:
EOS partition [type: ext4, moun-point: /] (for primary storage and usage of EOS)
EOS-EFI partition [type:FAT32, mount-point: /efi]
linux swap partition (because i have 6 GB RAM)
Systemd was properly installed, and now i have a smooth running multiboot system with different boot partitions for both Operating systems.
Dalto, I have never done something like this before, so if you have any suggestion for management of those two boot partitions, then please share it.
I would also rename the mount point /boot and not /efi but hey if it’s working please disregard.
And yes, 250 way too small. I gave it 1GB just to be safe, personally. Doesn’t the installer (endeavour) default to 500mib +? 250 seems self-inflicted.
OK, that’s my fault. I didn’t watch Joe’s install video because I process things better with written words
so two weeks ago I reinstalled Endeavour with the Arch instructions. I usually make my partitions manually.
Endeavour renamed my label to /EFI. Hilarious. That makes me happy. I didn’t expect them to go over my head but I’m glad they did! Whatever it takes to function.
EDIT: now I’m not happy I’m pi**sed. I made a ‘non-hibernate’ swap partition that is nowhere to be seen in gparted. The installer showed it…Not my thread I am over and out.
