Question Linux on a USB or VM?

manly · Sunday at 4:36 PM

biostud said:
I thought GRUB was installed along with mint, but it is something I need to install afterwards?

So after I've installed mint on my new disk and let all drives stay in, will it then still boot to Windows, as it is the primary bootloader? or is it depending on which drive I choose in the BIOS?

Or will Windows boot manager identify the mint installation, so I really don't need GRUB?

The Mint installer will also install Grub2 at the end of setup; sorry for the confusion. I was distinguishing between the copying of the actual OS code, vs Grub2 installation.

IF you install Grub2 onto NVMe1, it will replace the main bootloader. It will automatically generate a menu with an entry to boot Win11. By default it would boot Linux, but that could be changed so that it would automatically boot up Win11.

IF you go with the original plan to install Grub2 onto NVMe2, this leaves you with two bootloaders that point to one ESP. I think that will work, but seems a bit quirky? (Or you could create an ESP on the second disk, also quirky IMO.)

If I understand correctly, with UEFI it's possible to not have Grub2 at all, but I've never done this and I'm not sure that I'd try.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1495204/dual-boot-with-windows-without-grub-bootloader

Sorry there a few different ways of doing this. There is one "normal" way, but if your objective is to strictly leave the Windows disk unchanged, then there are alternatives.

biostud · Sunday at 4:44 PM

manly said:
The Mint installer will also install Grub2 at the end of setup; sorry for the confusion. I was distinguishing between the copying of the actual OS code, vs Grub2 installation.

IF you install Grub2 onto NVMe1, it will replace the main bootloader. It will automatically generate a menu with an entry to boot Win11. By default it would boot Linux, but that could be changed so that it would automatically boot up Win11.

IF you go with the original plan to install Grub2 onto NVMe2, this leaves you with two bootloaders that point to one ESP. I think that will work, but seems a bit quirky? (Or you could create an ESP on the second disk, also quirky IMO.)

If I understand correctly, with UEFI it's possible to not have Grub2 at all, but I've never done this and I'm not sure that I'd try.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1495204/dual-boot-with-windows-without-grub-bootloader

Sorry there a few different ways of doing this. There is one "normal" way, but if your objective is to strictly leave the Windows disk unchanged, then there are alternatives.

I don't mind using GRUB, if everything works, and no boot loader gets corrupted in the process

manly · Sunday at 5:45 PM

biostud said:
I don't mind using GRUB, if everything works, and no boot loader gets corrupted in the process

I've used Linux for almost 30 years, so I'm a little biased. I like KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) so I would use one bootloader: Grub2 on the first disk.
You can set Win11 as default if that works better for your family.

One aside, GRUB may not display well for 4K HiDPI configs. This page has a solution:

How to scale GRUB menu on 4K displays

Tutorial showing how to scale the GRUB bootloader menu on displays with HD/UHD resolutions

www.dedoimedo.com

biostud · 2025-06-25T04:26:30-0400

manly said:
I've used Linux for almost 30 years, so I'm a little biased. I like KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) so I would use one bootloader: Grub2 on the first disk.
You can set Win11 as default if that works better for your family.

One aside, GRUB may not display well for 4K HiDPI configs. This page has a solution:

How to scale GRUB menu on 4K displays

Tutorial showing how to scale the GRUB bootloader menu on displays with HD/UHD resolutions

www.dedoimedo.com

I've installed my SN7100 and made the bootable USB, so I should be ready to go.

The only thing currently nagging me is reports of Windows wrecking GRUB during major updates, making booting of both OS impossible. Even though it should be fixed, it might be broken once again.

Microsoft Fixes Windows Update That Broke GRUB in Dual-Boot Systems

Microsoft finally fixed the GRUB boot issue on dual-boot systems nine months after a Windows update caused widespread Linux boot failures.

linuxiac.com

mikeymikec · 2025-06-25T04:45:43-0400

biostud said:
I've installed my SN7100 and made the bootable USB, so I should be ready to go.

The only thing currently nagging me is reports of Windows wrecking GRUB during major updates, making booting of both OS impossible. Even though it should be fixed, it might be broken once again.

Microsoft Fixes Windows Update That Broke GRUB in Dual-Boot Systems

Microsoft finally fixed the GRUB boot issue on dual-boot systems nine months after a Windows update caused widespread Linux boot failures.

linuxiac.com

I had secure boot disabled so this issue never affected me.

If Microsoft does something like this again, I would read up on disabling Windows Update entirely. Win11 is little more than a game OS for me now, so if it can't behave itself then it's going to need a firm hand.

biostud · 2025-06-25T09:01:06-0400

mikeymikec said:
I had secure boot disabled so this issue never affected me.

If Microsoft does something like this again, I would read up on disabling Windows Update entirely. Win11 is little more than a game OS for me now, so if it can't behave itself then it's going to need a firm hand.

Yeah, my kids use my computer as well for gaming. Unfortunately I have update OCD, if I know there's an update I must install it

mikeymikec · 2025-06-25T09:10:00-0400

biostud said:
Yeah, my kids use my computer as well for gaming. Unfortunately I have update OCD, if I know there's an update I must install it

Maybe you can work that all out to your heart's content in Mint because on the default settings it's completely optional

manly · 2025-06-25T16:54:38-0400

biostud said:
I've installed my SN7100 and made the bootable USB, so I should be ready to go.

The only thing currently nagging me is reports of Windows wrecking GRUB during major updates, making booting of both OS impossible. Even though it should be fixed, it might be broken once again.

Microsoft Fixes Windows Update That Broke GRUB in Dual-Boot Systems

Microsoft finally fixed the GRUB boot issue on dual-boot systems nine months after a Windows update caused widespread Linux boot failures.

linuxiac.com

Oh FFS took them 9 months to fix the bug? LOL

I'll admit, if Windows overwrites GRUB (which AFAICT rarely happens), it can be a bit obscure to fix. Some Linux live disks have something like a "repair GRUB" option, but this isn't quite as simple as it sounds. Because you have to understand what the setup was to correctly fix it. If only you could ask ChatGPT to fix it.

Along a similar line, IF you wanted to install Grub2 onto SN7100 completely separately from the existing disk, here's how you would create a new ESP. But I've never done this before, and I'd have to study it to understand what's going on (it requires a sequence of commands).

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/yijvbj/comment/iulpwu8

mikeymikec · 2025-06-26T02:19:40-0400

Linux Mint has a repair GRUB option which is what I used to resurrect my Linux setup after migrating machines and discovering that the boot info was on the Windows drive I had wiped to install Win11 on. Repairing GRUB worked for me without any fuss.

biostud · 2025-06-26T02:26:42-0400

mikeymikec said:
Linux Mint has a repair GRUB option which is what I used to resurrect my Linux setup after migrating machines and discovering that the boot info was on the Windows drive I had wiped to install Win11 on. Repairing GRUB worked for me without any fuss.

That's what I wanted to hear. As far as I understand if everything goes really bad, I can always create a USB with mint with the repair tool, and should be able to fix it.

Repairing Linux Mint Boots with the Boot Repair Tool – TheLinuxCode

Have you ever powered on your Linux Mint desktop only to be confronted with cryptic errors instead of your familiar login screen? Or perhaps Mint boots, but immediately crashes due to issues with system files or hardware drivers. These failed boots can be caused by: Corrupted bootloader installs...

thelinuxcode.com

biostud · 2025-06-26T02:28:02-0400

Also I think of splitting the new drive in a 1TB mint partition and 1TB data (NTFS or should I use another if it's used both for win11 and mint?)

mikeymikec · 2025-06-26T10:30:40-0400

biostud said:
Also I think of splitting the new drive in a 1TB mint partition and 1TB data (NTFS or should I use another if it's used both for win11 and mint?)

My data drive is NTFS because its predecessors were NTFS. <shrugs>

Tradition?

I thought you had a separate data drive in this plan already?

biostud · 2025-06-26T11:04:20-0400

mikeymikec said:
My data drive is NTFS because its predecessors were NTFS. <shrugs>

View attachment 126294

Tradition?

I thought you had a separate data drive in this plan already?

Yeah, but There is no reason to use all 2TB for mint. Maybe I could use it for a more advanced Linux down the road

mikeymikec · 2025-06-26T11:21:06-0400

biostud said:
Yeah, but There is no reason to use all 2TB for mint. Maybe I could use it for a more advanced Linux down the road

I have a similar quandary in that a 1TB SSD made the most sense cost-wise when I was switching out a SATA SSD for NVMe (my current case really doesn't do a good job of housing SATA drives), but I had been making do with a 128GB SSD for Linux. These days my 1TB SSD has ~700GB space spare and that's with allegedly ~200GB of Timeshift data on it (think System Restore). I suppose it gives me lots of spare capacity for more virtual machines

I'm reticent to make two data partitions as it unnecessarily complicates things, such as deciding what goes on a faster data drive vs the slower one, backups, etc.

One day I'll get low on space on my data drive and I might change things up then, another possibility is that my Windows SSD might get low on space and the spare space on the Linux SSD could be turned into a 0.5TB extra games volume. 1.3TB left to go on the data drive. Plenty of can-kicking to be had.

lxskllr · 2025-06-26T11:46:11-0400

I don't like partitions. Seems like you always end up with wasted space. Big enough to use, but not big enough to use for anything meaningful, so it just sits there.

2TB is a big drive though. Turning it into two 1TB drives wouldn't be awful if you need data access from windows and linux.

edit:
Or give more to windows if the only thing on the linux drive is the o/s itself, and miscellaneous files from running it.

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