I read a review over there that was negative but to me reading it was meant to be
that way.
On to the question why would anyone install an Os on an external drive expect it to run
properly and maybe not have issues to do a review of it?
And have issues on partitioning it
I dont know seems like the last thing one would want to do.
But dont give distro a bad rap because of it
Ok done ranting..lol
Oh only reason it caught my eye was because it was about 4.5
I guess it's this one:
I have been using and following Solus since his birth. He has a hard time. But gradually it acquired its own physiognomy, and there was a period when it was close to perfection. Then there was a decline. More recently, an attempt at abandonment and murder. And a new attempt at revival. - 4.4 was a life-saving operation that somewhat succeeded. What can I say about 4.5? I tried to install KDE on an external drive by preparing a partition on it. Instead of installing where indicated, the installation erased the entire disk and located on it, formatting the empty space to FAT 16. And inexplicably, a new installation icon appeared on the start screen in the way that Debian live disks do .Xfce installs correctly, but it turns out that it can't distinguish between keyboards and won't allow any keyboard setting other than the one it was originally set to. I couldn't even mount Budgie because it didn't find the external drive. These initial setbacks made me hesitant to do any more in-depth testing. I think releasing the version as it is is rushed and not well thought out. In this form, it cannot be evaluated.
It sounds weird what happened there.
Have you ever looked at reviews to help decide if something is worth purchasing and seeing all the low scores that give negative reviews that do not make sense?:
It goes on and on, the majority of user reviews are not helpful in making a decision.
Bringing it back to Linux. I have seen people review a distro in a VM and complain it was just not as snappy as their chosen host OS. No way really? or "They did not have the latest version of Firefox and its been out for weeks!" When that version only addressed issues on Windows. There is always going to be nonsense like this or use cases that are really important to them and they think you suck if you do not support it, don't take it seriously; Trust me it is not worth the energy.
EDIT:
I should make clear I have not read the review. I do not visit distrowatch if people have feedback / support requests they should not be filing it over there.
[deleted] that one reeks of @Harvey 's classic #2 in that list if I was a wagerer.
... : @Axios don't let it get you down. I wrote this one off as vindictive and many will take it with a grain of salt.
I like how Reviewer ascribed the masculine pronoun to Budgie (as opposed to the standard "she" for cars, boats, etc) however, but I didn't understand the part with the big word in it or what it meant in the second sentence.
I ran off of an external lacie porsche early on in my solus adventure but also jump drives. With the external it often want to boot from the windows hdd and mysteriously sometimes thought it's boot was on another usb drive (maybe I installed wrong but I was raw scared noob back then).----
So yes, I agree with you, an external drive is neither optimal or smart----there has to be inherent shortcomings in it since it' usb-tethered and not hooked into the Mobo. After a while the external was more trouble than it was worth so I gave Budgie its (or is it 'his'
?) own dedicated home.
The complainer is essentially dual booting with an external drive.
I have posted numerous times my method for dual boot. It boils down to the changing flags on the boot/efi partitions. If you don't do that, one os or another is gonna hijack a boot partition.
elfprince I do not advise drive removal. I advise changing flags on the boot/esp partitions
edit - this
This is an old comment that I feel might be helpful again today. This is the functional equivalent to disconnecting the drive you are not installing to when dual booting
You do not say what your partition scheme is. Are all distros on the same disc or on their own? Solus will require it's own => 512MB fat32 boot/efi partition or it's likely to get corrupted eventually.
From a previous post, not entirely relevant but some useful info regarding changing flags. Start at step 5
"You're in a bit of a tricky situation. Are you willing to wipe your computer to do this "right"? If yes, this is what I would do in your situation:
1 - Backup all important data
2 - Make sure you backed up all important data
3 - Running in a Solus live USB, with GParted, wipe drive by deleting all partitions. Then make an ext4 partition of whatever size you want Solus to occupy. Hit the check button to run the commands. This is a placeholder to keep Windows from recognizing the space. Keep the rest unallocated
4 - Install Windows. It will automatically use the unallocated space. Run all updates Windows wants you to run. Reboot and make sure all updates and drivers have been added
5 - Reboot to a Solus live USB, with GParted, change the flag of the Windows EFI partition to msftdata (right click the partition, select manage flags). Delete the ext4 placeholder partition. Create a 1024MB (525MB is good too) fat32 partition. Create a swap partition (I use 4 - 8 GB). Create an ext4 partition with the rest of the unallocated space. Hit check to run the commands. Change flag of the new fat32 partition to boot, esp.
6 - Install Solus to the swap and ext4 drives you just made. It should select the new fat32 drive for EFI automatically. Make sure it does. If so, hit install
7 - Update Solus (sudo eopkg up -y)
8 - In GParted, change windows fat32 partition flag back to boot, esp. (Optional: change flag of Solus EFI partition to msftdata, updates run fine and Windows won't trash it)
9 - Profit
Alternate version, things are a bit fuzzy here, be careful:
Resize the main Windows partition (basic data partition), reducing it by the amount you want to use for Solus. I think you can do this with disk manager in Windows but you may need to use GParted in Solus live. The advantage with Disk manager is Windows automatically recognizes this change. If you use GParted, Windows will have problems and it will want to self repair. Allow any repair requests Windows makes. Create partitions as outlined above in this space you just made
The biggest problem with the alternate version for me is the Solus partitions are in the middle of the Windows partitions. It's messy and ruffles my OCD. Also much harder to keep track of the partitions later.
elfprince Not many people are adventurous enough to yank out a drive from their enclosed/sealed pc, myself
It's a necessity for me to have an accessible panel to remove. So it's an easy on/off and plenty of room for a hand. Have to plug in windows and update it on occasion. When Solus was dire I had to look at distros on separate disks. So unplug. And any bare-metaling I need to unplug stuff too.
**And I have to walk back following @murbert to a tee, I don't. It was @tomscharbach 's separate disks/unplugged system that I follow to a tee. Since I've done that nothing I mean nothing has interfered/interacted negatively with each other from updates to boot menu.
What I adopt from @murbert is the partitioning and sequence. Eventually doing a marriage of both in my installs.
Takes me years to get some things right
murbert No, I never use Windows, period. In my case, I have 2 ssd system, both internal. I installed Solus first by carefully following the efi install steps, by using the gparted first to resize etc. Surprisingly, Solus installed its boot to the other ssd, even though the Solus ssd itself was all set up with flags and stuff.
Later on, I installed Linux Lite to the other ssd, and it got installed ok, using grub.
Both os are running well, I boot one or the other, according to needs.
elfprince Surprisingly, Solus installed its boot to the other ssd, even though the Solus ssd itself was all set up with flags and stuff.
if your two ssd's boot up just fine than no reason to change it. I've had that 'boot installed on another drive' thing from solus years ago (like you said despite partition and setting flags) and I thought I was going mad and no one would believe me so I kept it to myself! glad to hear its not uncommon.
