Re: [gentoo-user] Re: How to set up drive with many Linux distros?

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

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On Mon, Feb 26, 2024 at 4:45 PM Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> On 2024-02-26, Wol <antlists@youngman.org.uk> wrote:
> > On 26/02/2024 20:51, Grant Edwards wrote:
> >
> >> The simple answer is to quit wasting time trying to multi-boot like
> >> that and just buy a dozen USB flash drives.
> >>
> > And then, if USB isn't the default boot media, he might as well sort out
> > UEFI boot, and multi-boot that way.
>
> Except that every time I've found a write-up about multibooting a lot
> of Linux distros with UEFI, it turns out that it doesn't actually work
> very well and is more work to maintain than what I'm doing now.
>
> --
> Grant

I have no experience beyond three operating systems on a single machine
but if you grabbed just 2 or 3 USB flash drives then I would think you
could test it pretty easily. I believe the UEFI boot procedures are
storing a unique ID for the disk or the partition you are requesting. If you
have a unique ID that's different for each flash drive it would (hopefully)
find the one you're looking for which should be relatively simple.

I would suggest you use the boot ordering feature and make the
system hard drive last in the list. If no USB devices are plugged in
it would default to your system drive. If a flash drive is plugged in
it should find its ID and boot that first.

I do not know if, for instance, you had 20 different drives listed in
your BIOS whether it would be a lot slower to boot but you could
test that yourself.

Good luck,
Mark

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