I probably haven't looked enough on this forum, but I have an installation question. I have a new laptop I got today with windows 10 on the ssd, and has another hdd for whatever I want to put on it. Typical setup, but I have never had a system like this that I installed linux on. My question is when I install Solus will the larger hdd be recognized and what partitions can I choose from, like /downloads, /pictures, etc.? Probably not making a ton of sense, but I think I'm being clear enough. This will also not be a dual booted system. I will discard windows. Thanks so much for your patience.

D

The installer allows you to install your /home directory on a different partition or drive, which is useful if you practice distro-hopping on a regular basis. I tried the two following setups:

  • OS on SSD, /home on HDD
  • OS on SSD, /home on SSD with logical links to Documents, Downloads, Pictures, etc... on HDD.
    The second setup boots much faster for some reason. I suspect that it waits for the drive to spin up before booting or something.
    The internal HDD was not automatically mounted on my system. You need to do the following to get it to automount at boot:
  • Run the Disks utility
  • Select the HDD and click Options > Edit Mount Options.
  • In the Mount Options window, unselect 'User Session Defaults'.
  • Enable 'Mount at system startup'. You can also change the mount point to a folder of your liking.

Thanks so much. I have it installed and now just have to mount the second drive. I will try the second option. I'm really happy to be coming back to Solus. I had it some time ago and left for Manjaro. After this speedy response, I don't think I will be going anywhere soon. Once again, thanks so much.

bside

I forgot to add: set up the automount first before creating the links to the HDD.

3 years later

I'm using windows all the time and sometimes I tried to switch to linux, mostly I failed because of many errors which occurs by my faulty actions. But I don't know how to install OS on SSD and Home on HDD. Because of I'm almost completely beginner to linux, I need very exact detail tutorial to do so. I would like to try solus budgie on my computer. Thanks.

    mrBeginner-Mint

    I'll second @murbert's suggestion. As a beginner, you'd be much better off with a simple plain vanilla install, rather than dealing with multiple drives and Windows overwriting your boot partition. Better yet, find an old machine that is gathering dust and install Solus on that. Beg, borrow, or if necessary, buy a cheap one from the thrift store. A dedicated install will prevent any Windows shenanigans from hosing your Linux install.

    After you've reinstalled Solus two or three times (you aren't learning unless you are breaking things, eh?), you'll be much more familiar with partitioning schemes and you can get a bit more creative. And when that time comes, I would strongly suggest that you don't mix Windows and Linux on the same disk, nor allow them to share an ESP partition. Keep the OS's completely isolated on their own disks if you want reliability and then use the UEFI boot menu to select which OS to boot.

      I wouldn't recommend sharing your entire home directory between different distributions - clashes in config files may cause problems.