Very likely I installed Solus on the remains of an AntiX partition quite a while ago...
Would be nice if Solus would give a warning if beeing installed on a (in the long term) too little EFI-Partition.

    LordMyschkin This doesn't seem like a likely scenario as I understand it. I doubt you could guide the iso installer into a 200MB partition, and even if you could, Solus would be unable to boot from a 200MB partition as I've seen in countless threads...I wonder if it shrunk when you installed something after Solus.

        brent Solus would be unable to boot from a 200MB partition as I've seen in countless threads...I wonder if it shrunk when you installed something after Solus.

        No. Solus will install with an EFI boot partition smaller than 512 MB, as frequently happens when installed alongside Windows, which uses a 100 MB EFI boot partition. That's why there are a gazillion threads cautioning users to make sure that the user sets up a 512 GB partition when manually partitioning. Solus sets up a 512 GB partition by default, but that doesn't mean that a user can't override the default partition size by setting up Solus to use a smaller existing partition.

        LordMyschkin Would be nice if Solus would give a warning if beeing installed on a (in the long term) too little EFI-Partition.

        The documentation is clear about the required partition size.

              brent Yeah but can you boot with 200MB?

              Sure.

              I screwed up one time and installed Solus Budgie alongside Windows 10 in a dual-boot, single-drive installation. Solus used the Windows EFI partition, which is 100 MB. It worked fine until the kernel updated a few times, and then the EFI partition ran out of space.

              If the Windows EFI partition were 200 MB rather than 100 MB, I would have been able to update the kernel a few more times before everything went to hell.

              My misadventure was one of the reasons I absolutely refuse to dual-boot, single-drive any more, and dual-boot, dual-drive now. I learn hard, but I learn. Some of the time, anyway.

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                  • Post #15

                  tomscharbach Having a dedicated SSD just for EFI

                    I had this same issue with the 200MB EFI partition, possibly through installing from an old ISO (4.0?).

                      laurker Yes, I think fairly old ISOs had the default set to 200mb. Too little now, but I imagine at the time it made sense.

                      I usually manually partition my drives and do a 1GB boot partition. Sure it's overkill but overall a minuscule loss for most modern SSDs (of which 500GB is now very affordable and should be the minimum for most people).

                          ReillyBrogan I think fairly old ISOs had the default set to 200mb. Too little now, but I imagine at the time it made sense.

                          A lot of distros use smaller partitions. My 11-3180, running Kubuntu auto-partitioned during installation this morning, has a 116 MB EFI partition, about the size of the Windows partition, which is 100 MB, as I recall.

                          My understanding is that the most common size guideline for Linux EFI partitions is between 100 MB to 550 MB. Solus is on the high side. No big deal unless you try to use an existing partition as the Solus EFI partition.

                          Dual booting from a single EFI partition requires more space than single booting, of course, and sometimes firmware is located in the EFI partition, which adds to the total needed.

                          It doesn't hurt to go large if you manually partition, but I install only one OS per drive, each drive with its own EFI partition, so I let the installer auto-size.

                          Edit/Update: I checked the EFI partition size on my Windows laptops. The Optiplex 7070 (circa 2019) and the Latitude 7390 (circa 2018) both have 100 MB EFI partitions. The Latitude 7520 (circa February 2022) and the Latitude 3120 (circa December 2022) both have 200 MB EFI partitions.

                          Both the 7070 and the 7390 came with Windows 10 OEM-installed and were upgraded to Windows 11 when the upgrade was available. The upgrade did not repartition the disk. Both the 7520 and the 3120 came with Windows 11 OEM-installed.

                          It looks like Microsoft has increased the EFI partition size for OEM Windows 11 installations. The increase from 100 MB to 200 MB might be a Dell decision rather than a Microsoft requirement, though. I don't know.

                          At some point during the year, I am likely to do a clean reinstall of Windows 11 on the 7390, deleting all the existing partitions as part of the process and letting Windows 11 auto-partition on a non-partitioned disk, and I'll be interested to see whether Windows 11 installs a 100 MB EFI partition or a 200 MB EFI partition with the reinstall.

                            ReillyBrogan Yes, I think fairly old ISOs had the default set to 200mb. Too little now, but I imagine at the time it made sense.

                            Yes, seems like there was a condition for drives smaller than 20 GB, which then set the ESP size to 250 MB instead. That was changed on Jul 2, 2019 to be 512 MB for all cases. Additionally there was a lower limit of 300 MB for pre-existing partitions (and manually created ones), that was also set to 512 MB on Jan 31, 2021.