I have just updated to Linux Mint 20.
That doesn’t sound like much of an achievement, but let me tell you a bit about my setup:
I dual boot. I love Linux and I have been doing just about anything I do on my computer on Linux including post processing of my photos (OK, some day we shall have a talk about Canon). The only caveat is gaming, and I do game too – and it is not really viable to avoid Windows, if you game. So I have been dual booting a Linux Mint and a Windows 10.
I use UEFI. Why? Because I was told it was safer and more modern, and who wouldn’t like that? But it can make things like dual booting infinitely more challenging. Did you know that Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, which means the bootloader goes into the same directory? The bootloader needs to be signed, and the signing key trusted by the BIOS – and how does an open source OS then gets signed?
And talking about UEFI and dual booting Windows: install Windows first; it does not seem to understand why you would want anything but Windows.
I needed a clean install. I have used the current Linux Mint for quite some time, and many things have come and gone, so I really needed a clean start. Combined with the fact that the root partition was on the small side and not extendable, it all pointed to a clean install. Which ideally would mean triple booting: Windows and old and new Linux Mint.
I use an encrypted home folder. It does cost some performance, but encryption is cool, and it means that I do not have to worry that much about what may lie around when I am done using the hardware. But the encrypted home folder is supposedly tied to the OS. How to handle that when doing a fresh install? And not only do I use an encrypted home folder, /home is a separate partition on other drive.
With a setup like this, I did a lot of contingency planning. But it simply worked. Hats off to all those involved in making that work!
Here is how it went:
First I booted into Windows and told it that I wanted to reboot of a USB – Windows can do a lot of tricks to make shutdown and startup faster, but this would probably count as a hint not to.
Install was the usual choosing of timezone and keyboard layout etc. Choose the exact same user and password as before (this is important). When it comes to choosing how to layout the filesystem across partitions, choose custom.
Now make the installer allocate space for a new partition for the root filesystem. Swap can be shared with the other instance – they will never run concurrently when in a multi boot setup. And mount the /home from the existing partition (do not format – which is the default).
The installer will recognize not only that there is a Windows and another Linux, and add them to the boot menu. But it will also allow the /home folder to be shared even though it is encrypted.
As most of my settings are persisted in my home folder, it means mostly just reinstalling all that I want to keep. Everything so far has just picked up as if nothing had happened. And I can still boot into the old version of Mint – at some point some applications will deviate enough to not be able to coexist, but it is still nice to be able to see, exactly how things where.
I am very impressed.