I have a machine which is triple booting Win 10, Win 7, and Ubuntu 16.10. I want to replace my Ubuntu with Endless. I have a Endless USB Stick set-up already. How do I install Endless to that one partition with Ubuntu?
I’M asking because the install dialogues after booting from the USB only hint at reformatting the WHOLE hard drive.
This isn’t supported at the moment. We only support:
The Endless OS image is just a GPT disk image with three partitions – EFI service partition, BIOS boot partition, and Endless OS root partition – so you might be able to set this up by hand, but you’ll need to take care and make sure you have recent backups in case of mishaps. Here’s a non-exhaustive list:
Alright, thanks.
Considering the needs it’s catering for, the available options make a lot of sense.
However, think about this in terms of the people who are in charge of deploying the OS. They need to test first, and considering that they have an interest in a Linux distro, they are probably used to dual booting already or they have a lot of experience with installers that are present in most Linux distros - which allow installation into a different position - and so they need to be able to see it’s usefulness and test it.
Windows users aren’t often interested in a Linux distro, it’s people who have used Linux that are interested. Most of these are dual booting already with another Linux distro such as Ubuntu, and the inability to test Endless really isn’t helping for the exposure of the public to Endless OS (or Endless OS to the public).
Please work on this. Flexible installation ability is one major reason people try Ubuntu (and Ubuntu-based distros), because they can do it without affecting the current state of their systems. If you want Endless to be popular, let people try it!
I wholly agree that Endless would be more readily adopted by other linux users if it could be installed like other linux flavours and be allowed to have a menu entry in grub beside users own linux partitions. I myself have puppy and Elive and would like Endless alongside, however I have put it on an older laptop that doesn’t show Endless as efficient as is could be. I’m fairly sure it would be as fast as Elive if it was on my main computer but I’m not going to risk scrubbing well stable and quick distros to find out. Also I enjoy the choice and different pkgs the individual distros provide. When in a hurry booting puppy to check the net takes seconds, a choice i enjoy. Surely tweaking Endless to be recognised by Grub alongside other linux’s is possible? (I’m not a coder so guessing here). Doing so would without doubt get more adopters. Hope this is something you can consider and develop. Thanks Brian.
The main reason you can only boot Endless OS using our copy of GRUB is that we have a customised module implementing the Boot Loader Specification which is used to find the (1 or 2) deployed ostrees of the OS. (Other distros rewrite their GRUB configuration for each new kernel.)
In principle you could manually set up a separate partition for Endless OS, add entries to chainload other distros’ GRUBs to the Endless OS grub.cfg. Dual-booting with other Linuxes is not something we have time to focus on an the moment.
This is something Im instered in too.
Would endless be open to accept that as a contribution ? Which is the best channel to talk to some developers and discuss that ?
Endless is a great system for beginners on the Linux world, it is more intuitive than another system. Generally, novice users don’t know how to manage a partition, so I understood the proposal. But if you really want to make a double-partitioned machine with any system and endless, one way is:
(Note: This way is not safe, because by decreasing the space of the partition, you can damage your hard drive or damage the integrity of your Endless system. I do not blame myself for possible mistakes, just brought a way that I used. I advise you not to do this without a backup, and if you are not sure, do it on a secondary machine, never on your main pc.)
Well, i’m trying to install Endless and Ubuntu in different disk, not in different partition. Then, i updating Endless Grub to detect Ubuntu. Here is the result.
Endless Grub can detect Endless and Ubuntu on the other disk
but when i choose Endless, i got an error
running journalctl, Endless failed to start OSTree
on the other hand, i can still boot into Ubuntu
How did you do this? Running update-grub on an Endless OS system will unfortunately not yield a bootable system. (We’re disabling it in a future update.)
yes, i’m running update-grub on Endless
You could install grub twice, on the first & second hard disk and then you should be able to do a
chainload (hd?)+1
to switch from Ubuntu Grub to endless OS Grub. Ofcourse you have two Independent grub.cfg files. What you have to substitute for the ? depends on which disk is installed what and which Grub is entered by the BIOS or UEFI boot manager.