Hi, I have downloaded Endless OS. It’s pretty nice. I would like to try using it but I don’t want to dedicate my PC to it. I’m a distro hopper. I have seven different versions of Linux on my PC at one time. I would like to use Endless OS so I could possibly recommend it to people. Why must Endless OS be the only OS on a PC? I understand that would be best for the default installation. Could you allow for an advanced installation that would allow you to install Endless OS alongside other OSs? I hope this could be considered.
Why Endless OS only OS on PC?
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Even if it would be nice to have some advanced installation options, personally i think, that people who run multiple operating systems are not the main target audience of EOS. Just out of curiosity, why do you run so many operating systems bare metal and don’t use some kind of hypervisor like GNOME Boxes?
I have a low powered system. I have a dual core i3 PC. I would probably try virtually if I had a better machine. Baremetal still runs better.
It’s just a question of resource allocation really. Our team is limited and supporting dual boot with other Linux distros is not an area we have decided to put effort into (yet), because we have been prioritising other projects that we see as more important for our target user base. That said, we appreciate you raising your voice all the same - threads like this one do influence our planning going forward, thanks!
Or in terms of technical reasons… Endless OS is built quite differently from other Linux distributions, largely through our use of ostree, and these changes go deep down, all the way into the bootloader. I imagine on your dual boot setup you are currently using (say) Ubuntu’s bootloader to boot Fedora (and 5 other non-Ubuntu distros), which generally works acceptably, however because Endless is fundamentally different it would be a challenge to have Ubuntu’s bootloader boot Endless.
Maybe it would be more realistic to make Endless’s boot loader support booting other distros, but that’s unexplored so far, may be complicated to integrate with our special Windows dual booting tricks, and brings along associated documentation challenges.
Maybe the landscape gets better in future, making it easier to solve these cross-distro challenges… The brand-new Boot Loader Specification aims to step in this direction.
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Thanks for the well written response.
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