tutorial, detailed, non stream-of-consciousness version:
I wanted a distro that I knew could take care of my life and business easily and with stability, and of course that was solus. Not budgie anymore, but Mate is fine.
I wanted a second distro to create on, express. After a year of auditions and @WetGeek distro threads, Bunsenlabs [some scientific element name here] was the one.
Solus Forums dual boot same disk uefi distro and grub distro together success stories: maybe one or 2?
So of course I messed this up 5 times but 5 is good for me.
NOTE: advanced and high profile GRUB distros like Ubuntu 22.04 have advanced enough bootloaders to set up grub shop right next to an existing Solus install and pull it off. Your smaller GRUB distros will not have that nation-state capability and thatâs why so many of these go down in flames.
Nuke your Solus, back it up, be ready to say goodbye, you have to start over to get what you want.
Install BunsenLabs first. Take a live iso, go into gprarted, and delete everything until itâs one giant unallocated pile called your hard drive.
Format the whole pile to GPT in gparted.
Now create a big unallocated partition on the unallocated partition for Bunsen. I did a 120 GB. Bunsen will seek this out like a shark later.
On the unallocated partition that is not the Bunsen-reserved unallocated partition, create an sda 1 boot partition at 512 for solus, formatted at fat32---leave it as msfdata flag right now, not boot/esp. Create a /root ext 4 partition at less than 120GB for Solusâmy Sda2. I did 106GB.
Do not create swap. I predicted Bunsen would create swap and Solus would piggyback off it later. My guess was right.
We are done in Live iso of your choice.
Shut down. I personally donât do any boot order stuff in my bios it sucks and its time consuming. I just tap an F-key when rebooting for a Boot Menu.
Insert your BunsenLabs New Element Name USB now and boot up. The reason you made the USB is BunsenScienceElementName did not like installing from Ventoy. So I followed their website instructions for live iso usb. Spoiler alert: itâs Rufus.
Oh BTW install BL first. Trust me.
Boot up with BunsenAtomicElement USB. Select Installer. It has like 5 live selections. Install.
All normal stuff. Bunsen cares not one iota about your Solus 512MB Sda1. It snorts at your big root ext 4 partition Sda2. It makes a buffet-line relay for the lust unallocated 120GB and strongly suggests we install there. Why surely.
A bunch of normal scripts happen, itsâs near the end and it throws a curious curveball at you. Bunsen says âhey, âweâre the only game in town on the HDD...so we are going to put a grub bootloader on this. You have to tell us if you want GRUB installed on this large funky unallocated partition that we love or this little sliver called Sda1 at 512 MB. Whatâs it going to be?â
Pick install GRUB Bootloader on large funky partition that BL prefers, not the 512.
BL will say the usual âyank live USB and reboot, your install is done.â
Donât listen to it. Shut down instead. Pop in your Ventoy with your live distro you like to gparted out of. You are going to want to see what Bunsen did to your HDD before you install Solus.
Boot into Ventoy. My live tool is solus mate. If gparted is your goal then it doesnât matter. Launch gparted. Hereâs what Bunsen did:
ignored empty SDA1 (512MB), set to msfdata.
Ignored empty SDA2 (ext 4, root, 106GB).
Created a crazy 1.1MB IMG file at SDA3 called I forgot but the flag was GRUB_BOOT.
Created its -120MB root ext filesystem ext 4 at SDA4.
Created a 2GB swap at SDA 5.
That looks nice. You only need to do one function in GPARTED: uncheck the msfdata flag OFF the sda1 and set the boot/esp data flags instead.
Since I was using Gparted in the live iso that I wanted to install, I did not reboot etc. I just closed gparted and went to the installer.
Solus install straightforward. Itâs LAST disk install option was âforce me into two hand-made partitionsâ but I told it sda1 and sda2 were itâs new home and the Solus installer did not complain or fail. Solus even tells you itâs going to share that swap that Bunsen made.
Install successful, remove usb, reboot yadda yadda but donât reboot. Let the suspense eat you up instead.
No, shut down instead. If you have a curious mind you are going to want to see this in Live Gparted so reboot with the ventoy in. It all looked right. But how do you know whatâs right? I donât know, kind of how you imagined after imagining and reading about an unholy GRUB/UEFI marriage on the same disk for years and years but were too scared to try it.
Shut down. Reboot with no more USBs, just hit the F key for bootloader. See both operating systems in boot menu.
If you can go into each of them successfully and update then you have GRUB and UEFI operating systems successfully installed. Dig it.
I have W10 that dual boots on a different drive but I unplugged it for all these moves. If this is your scenario, do the same. Itâs a nosy, vindictive OS that will sabotage all your work as it watches it unfolding in real time. Iâve seen it.
If you can uefi and grub successfully then you can plug win back in and have all three.
CONCLUSION:
after much failure I thought it would be easier for solusâ ctr-boot-manager to work around a grub installation. I could rarely get grub to work with an existing solis EFI install. Give the GRUB install the empty unformatted space it wants. Pick a structured space for Solus after that.
Solus is my life, Bunsen is my backup. Very happy.
