Tips on running multiple distros together on my laptop?
Hello all, sorry for such a newbish question, as I should probably know how to properly partition a hard drive, but I really don't know where to start. So what I'm looking to do is install a Debian distro, RHEL, and Arch. Want to go with Mint LMDE, Manjaro, and Fedora. I do not need very much storage, so I don't think space is an issue. I have like a 500+ something GB ssd and the few things that I do need to store are in a cloud. I pretty much use my laptop for browsing, researching, maybe streaming videos, and hopefully more programming and tinkering as I learn more; that's about all... no gaming or no data hoarding.
Do I basically just start off installing one distro on the full hard drive and then when I go to install the others, just choose the "run alongside" option? or would I have to manually partition things out? Any thing to worry about with conflicts between different types of distros, etc.? hoping you kind folks can offer me some simple advice on how to go about this without messing up my system. It SEEMS simple enough and it might be so, but I just don't personally know how to go about it lol. Thanks alot!!
They actually don't. They try and it works for some time. And then the next Windows update intentionally fries their dual-boot. Then they go back to Windows.
Or they understood enough about the details and how to minimize the risk (basically running Linux with an linux boot manager that then chain-loads Windows boot files from another disk, so Windows is mostly oblivious about the other OS... and even then Windows likes to screw with the efi record) that they are mainly running linux. And later they tend to ditch Windows completely of just keep a virtual machine if they really need it for some proprietory stuff.
At least those scenarios above cover 95% of all people "dual-booting" I know...
In comparison, dual- or triple-booting Linux is indeed a bit less problematic. But the same thing applies: You mainly run one. And given that Linux distributions are all nearly the same, with just a few differences in pre-configuration and defaults, there's not much point to it.
Thanks for the info. Since im an explorer and learner and want to try new things, I figure I ought to step out of my debian/ubuntu bubble and start to familiarize myself with Arch and Fedora (or RHEL I guess?). but I just personally want then physically installed instead of some image in the cloud, ya know? It's just actually implementing this plan is a tad confusing for me.
Who said anything about the cloud? It's all on your local machine. The VM 'hard disks' are just files on your computer.
That's my bad, I tend to kinda lump cloud, VMs, and containers together and sometimes use catchall phrases. I know they're all different and I should clarify.
No worries. For easy reference:
Cloud: someone else's computer
VM: walled-off compartment of your PC
container: not-so-walled-off compartment of your PC.
Perfect! thank you. And I always thought containers and VMs were opposite, like a container is more ingrained into the distro. TIL!
So, with a VM everything inside it runs on a completely separate software stack completely different OS, Kernel, etc. It's very much pretending to be another machine.
With a container, it's running from the same kernel as the host, and the compartmentalisation is handled by the kernel basically. By default they can't really see each other, but the kernel can see both.
Do the distros remember and keep everything the same way though? like do they remember all your settings and apps and what not? Idk why, but im under the impression that they wipe each time. probably way wrong lol
So, docker images don't save their changes by default. The idea being that the image is supposed to be a reliable image that can fix any snafus with a simple revert of the system disk.
It's really easy to save changes though, just use docker commit . You can also mount host folders to folders in the guest, where they are as changeable as anything on your host.
Ahh I see. I definitely do want to learn docker but I think that may be too tricky for me right now. I do tend to get sidetracked and go off into little experiments though and end up not getting anything done lol
Everything is saved like on a "real" system.
Well perfect! Idk why I was under the impression that each time you spin a VM, its like a temporary session...