linux4noobs

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linux4noobs

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PlutoParty@programming.dev

I'm ready to move from Mint and do some Distro Hopping. What's your suggestions on how to best do this from stock Mint 22.2? (lemmy.today)

submitted 2 months ago by hansolo@lemmy.today to c/linux4noobs@programming.dev

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Screenshot of my partitions. Partition 1 if EFI, Partition 2 is Mint Boot sector I believe. Partition 3 is everything else.

I'm looking to give OpenSUSE TW and Fedora a try specifically. HD is encrypted from install, and I didn't know to put /home on its own partition.

Plenty of storage space to play with. How should I approach hopping with the least amount of pain and cleanup when I finally figure out where I want to land?

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[–] PokerChips@programming.dev 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Damn. I was about to go into whole detail about setups and realized how rusty I am. I've been on arch for about 7 years now and just been super happy with the rolling release. I haven't had to do an install since the last time I bought a laptop and I quit trying to get others on Linux.

But give it some thought. It's really not as hard as others make it seem. Honestly, once you get it installed and setup is probably the easiest. It's very stable. After bouncing around with other distros I'd always run into things that irked me.

Just follow the wiki and you're golden.

As far as your partitions, I use to create a data partition that was the bulk of the free data. Then cut a megabyte out 10 times to create ten partitions. Those will basically be placeholder partitions.

So for instance, I now have a 999 gig data partition and 10 placeholder partitions. When I'm ready to create a swap partition, I move 5 gigs (from the ass end of the data partition) to the 11th partition. Then I move 30 gigs or so to the 10th partition for my root arch partition. And so on. You could move 30 to 50 gigs to the 9th partition and drop Fedora there and then OpenSUSE to the 8th partition. This makes it easier to jump back and forth without reinstalling and reinstalling. And all the while you can keep customizing each distro until you just get comfortable with one that keeps you most interested. (Maybe even drop Debian in the 7th partition for more familiarity with other based distros).

I've quit creating home partitions because I would get conflicts between distros and I honestly don't know how people handle that. I just use my data partition for storage.

Get comfortable with the dd command for copying your ISO, and MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU DO THE COMMANDS IN CORRECT ORDER with dd! Actually, don't get comfortable. I ALWAYS look up the correct order and don't even try to act like I remember.

I don't know if this is helping at all. It's late. I'm going to sleep.

Update:

So for your case, I would cut from partition 4. Create a logical partition (if that's still a thing). Make the first partition of logical partition your data partition. Then cut from that like explained above.