Installing Trisquel and gentoo on another drive, grub required?.
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Hi I already got trisquel installed on a drive and I would like to try gentoo on another drive, I m very new to linux and I need to check some details first; this new drive requires installation of grub?. Or, otherwise the grub that I see at the beginning when I turn on my computer will be able to recognize and load gentoo previously installed on this new drive?.
Hey folks it is Ututo what I want to try not gentoo, what a mistake!: gentoo is not on the fsf list!. but anyway the question will apply to any other linux distro to check on a new drive. the new distro requires installation of grub on its drive?.
I don't think so. GRUB only needs to be installed on the master boot record of
the first hard drive (or whatever media you have decided to set as the boot
media- this is usually /dev/sda or something of that sort), and (if configured
correctly) it will be able to boot into any installed operating system on any
other media, handing control over to it. Try installing Ututo on the second
hard drive- it will probably have options related to dual-boot/disk
partitioning in the installer, and will (hopefully) work out of the box,
probably setting up its own grub.cfg. If GRUB doesn't recognise, you can always
rectify the situation by chrooting into the second drive from the first, so you
should be able to get it to work one way or another. Give it a go, and tell us
what happens.
thanks a million to those who could help me!. Regards
Are we talking about two internal drives? If so, do not worry: the last installed distribution will populate GRUB's configuration with all available systems. I am not sure what happens with a USB external drive.
By the way: Gentoo can be 100% free. Not by default though. You need the "deblob" keyword in the USE variable and ACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FSF-APPROVED @FSF-APPROVED-OTHER". All that can be defined in /etc/make.conf.
I always have huge doubts regarding the quality/extensiveness of the effects of "100% free" settings on non-free distros:
What guarantee me that they go as far as Trisquel and parabola with packages content?
I guess that they use the ebuild LICENSE, but will using the "deblob" USE flag change iceweasel in iceweasel-libre, blacklist non-free dependencies and ajust the other USE flags accordingly, and prevent the suggestion of non-free programs, including in the manuals? both require patching the programs.
I personally fear two things:
-> Be mislead and install non-free software without knowing that it's non-free, that's why I need the suggestion issue fixed on all the repos I use. I don't know all software well so I very strongly prefer to trust the distro to do it correctly instead. Suggestion is so vague that it could also be in form of a package manager (firefox, iceweasel) or as a dialog "would you want to download " with some cryptic language.
-> That part of a package is non-free.
That said Gentoo seem very interesting. I am very attracted by the possibilities of customization, but I probably don't have the computing power to use it, and I'm waiting for a free version to give a try again.
The downside is that, "verifiable builds" wound probably not come any time soon due to the huge number of possible combinations when building gentoo.
Denis.
You are right. ebuilds fetch source codes from the sites of their respective authors. As far as I know, the Gentoo project maintains a few patches to apply to those source codes but that is the exception, not the rule. As a consequence, programs that raise subtle issues (such as those listed at http://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines ) would probably be installed unaltered despite the settings I mentioned. If the problematic parts of the software can be disabled at compile/build time, then there may be a keyword to append to USE to do so. "deblob" plays this role for the kernel only.
As for verifiable builds, I do not see the necessity given that a user of Gentoo receives source codes (minus the blobs) that she compiles on her own system.
Also my Gentoo is very rusty, but still, here are some tips:
-> I guess that you'd better handle grub.cfg inside trisquel, because trisquel doesn't expect a static/hand written grub.cfg, and I guess it would be easier to make gentoo have that.
-> Else last resort, you make both distro generate their grub.cfg. Then you add a menu that loads the other distro's grub.cfg with something like "configfile (hd0,msdos1)/boot/grub.cfg" inside the entry. To do that you would add what is needed in /etc/grub.d/*custom* (I don't remember which one by heart.
If you don't need to change compilation options, I strongly suggest that you'd give parabola a try.
I'm unsure of the state of ututo, I wonder if it's still maintained (That is, if the developers do fix freedom bugs).
For the distro to be tried, gnewsense seem old but it's based on debian, it could be nice to try.
Also if you want to play, libreCMC is nice to do custom images.
I've not tried proteanOS yet, so I can't comment on it.
I am a translator!
I installed Debian 8 on a USB stick when it came out in May and if I remember correctly at the end of the installation it asked me if I wanted to install grub so, not being sure I clicked "no" and that resulted in an unbootable Debian stick..
So I reinstalled and answered "yes" to "install grub" and was asked to choose the hard disk on which to install it (either my lappy hard drive or the USB stick itself - I selected my hard drive and that way the grub on my hard drive just got updated with the entry for booting Debian from the USB..
cheers
Thanks a million for bringing GRUB to light!. Regards! I ll try!.
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