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Old 12-17-2014, 06:14 PM   #1
Amaranth14
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Multi-booting with UEFI


For odd but valid reasons, I have become accustomed to quad-booting with four systems: Windows, Cinnamon, Gnome and KDE. This really ought not to be a problem with today's huge disks, but Grub 2 - which is still beta software, hence "installing for i386" etc - doesn't like it much. Moreover I have a Gigabyte motherboard which requires an IOMMU tweak to get 64-bit working and which makes running Windows in a VM unfeasible. I shall eventually get another board but meanwhile I should like to change to UEFI, which appears to recognize all Ubuntu systems as simply "ubuntu" regardless of the desktop, with obvious complications. Has anyone managed successfully to set up such a configuration, and if so, how?

Note: I use Windows so rarely that I suppose I could install it on my second HD, and change the boot order in Bios as necessary. The one immovable is my main system, the wonderful Mint Cinnamon 17.1.

Any help or advice will be much appreciated!
 
Old 12-17-2014, 10:33 PM   #2
veerain
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First UEFI is supported only in latest motherboards. It replaces old BIOS or they me hybrid systems also.

Second with UEFI you would need GPT type of partitioning.

Third Grub 2.00 is of stable quality. It supports UEFI only if built with this option.

Grab a latest Livecd/installcd of distro and install.
 
Old 12-18-2014, 04:21 AM   #3
Amaranth14
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Thanks for replying. Being able to use GPT is one of the great attractions of UEFI. In fact this new motherboard does support the latter and I have already successfully installed Mint alongside Win 8.1 using ReFind. The trouble comes when I attempt to install any further Ubuntu-based systems, as only the last one is bootable.

I should have given hardware details: Gigabyte GA-970a-DS3P, AMD FX 8320, 16Gb 1600 RAM, nVidia GT 640.

Formerly, with the older Grub, I never had any problem with multi-booting. It was possible to install the Grub of the second and further installations to their respective root partitions, then run a grand grub-update from the first. When Burg was still being maintained, this setup used enormously to impress Windows-using friends. Now I can't even get Plymouth to fill my (24") screen!
 
Old 12-18-2014, 05:34 AM   #4
veerain
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What boot loader you are using to boot refind or grub?
 
Old 12-18-2014, 12:41 PM   #5
Amaranth14
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Because of the difficulties adumbrated above, I have reverted to a Grub2/MBR setup. But what I really want to know is whather a multi-*buntu setup is even feasible with UEFI, which is why I want to know if anyone has done it. I should also like to know if, with UEFI, it would be possible to multi-boot Mint with non-Ubuntu-based systems, for example Manjaro KDE. If someone's done this, please let me know!
 
  


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