For what it's worth, here's my current set-up that I have on one of my computers, from first to last:

Debian Wheezy (GNOME Shell)
Ubuntu 14.04 (Unity and GNOME Shell)
Arch (Xfce)
openSUSE (KDE and Openbox)
Sabayon (KDE and Fluxbox)
Bridge Linux (Xfce)

Just one example, I guess.

I don't think the order should really matter, they could probably all share the swap, and possibly even the /home directory, or they could each have their own root, could be multiple options to play with. Like I said, break it and figure out what wont work lol

Worst that can happen is that you have to wipe partitions and install again, not a big issue on a play computer. :-)

Some comments on the discussion so far.

1. Solyd, like the Debian edition of Mint, is only semi-rolling-release. It delivers the updates in monthly bundles, after making sure that no-one is having serious trouble with them. That's why it's less likely to break.

2. The things that Korora does for you are installing the media codecs and flash. I don't think that wandering round the internet to find why your media files won't play and where the codecs are is "learning about Linux"!

3. To say that "Slackware is a better choice than Salix" invites the questions "why" and "have you used Salix". Salix is Slackware with the addition of dependency checking, several hundred extra programs, and some handy configuration tools. How that makes it worse is beyond me, but so are some of the posters in this forum!

1. Solyd is certainly not less likely to break when updating (did you mean dist-upgrading?) than original Debian. Than Debian testing, perhaps.

2. Adding these to Fedora is quite easy, requiring just few google searches, no wandering around. Learning how things work in Fedoraland, how to add repos and how to install software is, imho, 'learning about linux' (well, Fedora) enough.

3. Because Salix hides and automates things that are worth learning in Slackware (like dependencies or slackbuilds, for example). And those extra programs are actually just compiled slackbuilds in a repo, nothing really 'extra' you would miss in Slackware somehow.

Yes, i have used Salix with Xfce, back in the 13.37 days, when they released their version in an actually sensible manner, not 'one year after the Slackware we derived from was released, and maybe not at all'. Had problems with it. Gone to Slackware, problems went away.

If the OP didn't want to 'learn or break' but wished to use 'user-friendly versions of' instead, he could as well stay on Ubuntu.

SolydXK is based on Debian Testing! Perhaps you should do some internet searching before posting...

Ok... so far... i am still confused with the choices. However, i stumbled across this video and looks interesting would really like to do this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byW9ivpjDrU

What this guy does is, downloads small cd or tiny usb version of Debian and installs by non gui. then he does install xorg, fluxbox, xdm, xterm, thunar and so on... still i am not sure which other packages i would need to install stuff. I guess just after getting a Desktop i will install synaptics and then view what i need. Will it be helpful?

Further i have some questions:

1) WHile doing multiple installs, i know this is a noob question, How should i do the formatting?
WHat i have in my mind i would part my 320gig HDD into 30gb*3 (num of distros) and leave the remaining space divided into data drives. I won't opt for seperate Home drives and for swap. (I have 4 gigs of ram, won't it be sufficient?)

2) Also, if i am installing, say Atmel toolchain for linux and i want to use it in all distros, how should i go about it? I don't want to install each and everything in each distro! If you know what i mean.


Guys please do reply, your inputs are always helpful

If you don't have much experience installing Linux, you will probably have trouble using the method you refer to in your last post but it's up to you.

You can do it before beginning the install with GParted, create partitions and format them or you can do it during the install. Again, your choice.

Not sure what you mean by that, 3 30GB partitions for each distribution? Not sure what the purpose of that is. If you want a separate /home partition in addifiton to the root filesystem partition that's a choice frequently used. If you are creating a separate data partition, you can create one which can be shared by all the distros.

I have no idea what that is, maybe others do. You could post a link to a site with information on it.

Sorry, that's the only way. Everything you want to install, you'll have to install on every OS. The vast majority of programs you might want to install depend on shared libraries, and everything is version-matched for compatibility. When you switch to a different OS, you switch shared library versions, and you'll most likely break anything that was compiled to use the other one. Whether or not a program is actually able to work properly on all three OSs is going to be a matter of luck more than anything else.

I really don't understand the point of multi-booting different versions of Linux. In over 12 years of using Linux daily, I have NEVER needed or even wanted a setup like that.

Use one version. If you like it, keep it. If you don't, then experiment with a few others in VMs or live CDs until you find one you like better, and then switch. It's not like multi-booting Windows and Linux. There's nothing you can do in one modern Linux distro that you can't do in another (at least not that I can think of). Some distros might make certain things a bit easier, but are you really going to reboot your computer into a different distro every time you want to use wireless, and then reboot again when you want to listen to something, reboot again when you want to print? So what is the point of multi-booting?

It just sounds like a nightmare to me. If you want to play around with different distros temporarily, use a live CD. If you want to play around with different distros more long-term, use a VM.

Uhh, but i know that pretty well. That's why i wrote it's 'certainly not less likely to break' than original Debian (that is, Debian stable).

If you want to learn, i think this is an excellent idea.

I see nothing wrong with that. 30GB for each distro is large enough. Separate home is not recommended and i agree with you on not doing that, and yes, 4 gigs of ram should be enough, though some small (4GB) swap wouldn't hurt either.

Unfortunately you will have to install each and everything in each distro. These are separate systems, after all.

Hey guys,

i am all excited for the fluxbox lightweight plain debian... i found some more resources for the same. However, i am unable to loacate correct .iso for the same from debian website. Please tell me which one should i choose... i want just plain debian-base without desktop.

1) mini.iso (size around 25mb) from this link :http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dist...mages/netboot/

or

2)the iso (size around 222mb) that i would get after clicking on amd64 below small cd. http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst



the vast size difference is befuddling me.

Hey guys,

please check out the pic. Tell me if i need to change anything? Also i read this file about how to do this. Still m not sure about bootloader and how to modify config file to add newly installed OS.

Please suggest me changes or implementation procedures regarding the same.


thanks again

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Doesn't matter what image you pick, as long as you are able to initialize an installation from it. Just untick the 'desktop' during component selection screen.

If you are planning to install Debian on sda3 and some other Linux distributions on sda5 it should work fine. You will need to decide which systems bootloader you want. If you want the Debian bootloader, when you install the second Linux, select to install its bootloader to the root partition on which you are installing it rather than the master boot record. If you are planning to install more than two Linux distributions, you will need to shrink sda5 or sda6 and create another partition.

What's the purpose of the ntfs partition if you are only installing Linux? Will you be using this as a backup for some windows install?

Hey guys,

As per previous discussion, i have following partition table:

bootloader 500mb
swap 4.0gb
debflux 40gb
linux2 60gb
data 193.60gb (rest)


so i installed the debian on debflux partition. While doing the installation i selected bootloader partition as /boot and swap as swap. All went partially well and as i wanted to do, i installed everything manually. fluxbox xorg xdm alsa-utils wicd wicd-gtk bbmail bbtime alltray fbdesk arandr thunar conky vim and so on...

still i have a few problems.

1) Deb doesn't boot correctly. At a point the installer says remove installation media (cd/dvd/usb) and i did. so now it should boot from the ATA hdd. however, it didn't and i got no os found. When i did put usb back in the port and boot the machine. It went straight to grub. Same is happening again and again. It won't boot up without my usb.

2) Audio doesn't work with alsa-utils

3) wicd can't find wifi networks to connect to. (i have already installed firmware-realtek from non-free repos)

please please reply. I am this close to a fun sexy distro.

hey there tuxbuddies,

i am back with this cool and uncool snaps.

see the second snap. Before this installation i did install Ubuntu thrice and i have no experience about debian. However, I don't know what happened but this is the error i am getting. I just want to mount this empty drive which will be like a Data drive for the debian.


Please give me a reply what may be the cause and what solution i can implement?


thanks. please reply your inputs are important to me.

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