tkissing3d ago
Google is useless for this, so hopefully the Fediverse can help.
I have a PC with Windows 11 on one SSD and I want to install #linux on another SSD. I don't want to touch the current primary SSD at all, just boot from USB, install Linux, set that new SSD as primary boot partition in the #UEFI #BIOS and from then on have the Linux boot manager show up and let me choose which OS I want to boot. I use Linux, but haven't set up #DualBoot in literal decades. Any tips/guides for this specific case?
Show threadWenAstar3d ago

@tkissing
Create USB-Stick
Set UEFI to boot the stick
Install Linux on second drive
Have UEFI boot drive #2

Grub should already have detected the Windows partition and be able to boot it.

(I have been doing this with Linux Mint and Fedora successfully in the past).

Show threadtkissing3d ago
@WenAstar No need to remove the windows drive physically, right? And the default if I choose an empty drive as target is for it to create an EFI partition?
Show threadMarcos Dione3d ago
@tkissing @WenAstar if you're really worried, you can unplug the Win disk, but that would mean fiddling with grub manually after. Depending on the distro that could go from easy to hard, as each has its own scripts around grub... or none.
Show threadtkissing
@mdione Yeah I'd rather not, both because I don't want to touch the hardware and because I don't like adding stuff to grub after. Fortunately the Bazzite installer seems to make this pretty safe
a) it shows the full drive display name and device id
b) it let's me mount the windows partition from the live environment and then tells me I can't install on a mounted drive
Apr 13 at 3:34pmMastodon for Android