I have a W7/Debian machine with the bootloader in the MBR. I’d like to instal Opensuse. IS there anything I have to do or will Opensuse install without me having to do anything to the MBR?
Thanks.
On 2017-06-28, rick71 <rick71@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com> wrote:
> I have a W7/Debian machine with the bootloader in the MBR. I’d like to
> instal Opensuse. IS there anything I have to do or will Opensuse install
> without me having to do anything to the MBR?
It depends. By `bootloader’ do you mean GRUB2? If you do, then in principle the answer is no because you can always run
os-prober from its respective host GNU/Linux distribution to update the GRUB2 entries to include openSUSE. If you want
to triple-boot, bear in mind it is usually a good idea to create a separate partition for an additional GNU/Linux
distribution. This may or may not be problematic on your already dual-boot MBR-partitioned hard drive.
Are you using a desktop and not a laptop? If so, then a better solution is to use one hard-drive per operating system.
There are many reasons why this solution is attractive, but since you are using W7 the main reason is that Windows
updates can occasionally go wrong when chainloading through GRUB2. If Windows has its own hard drive however,
transiently switching to native Windows booting is trivial during the Windows update.
It is not clear to me if you want to install openSUSE in place of Debian (resulting again in dual boot), or even in place of W7 and Debian (making it single boot), or if you want to install openSUSE alongside them (making it triple boot).
Hopefully to clear things up.
Laptop.
W7/Debian dual boot with bootloader/grub2/? in the MBR
I want to replace Debian with Leap.
The drive is formatted Restore, W7 , swap, extended (root, home)
I know that the default is to not install in the MBR.
What do I do with the boot loader? Will Opensuse automatically edit the MBR if I choose the default boot loader location?
It should not if you select bootloader location in partition and chose to not install generic code in MBR (you may need to enter bootloader configuration in summary screen).
During install, there is a summary screen listing all of the install section. Click on the Bootloader heading there.
The default is to not use the MBR, though that probably depends on which file system you are using. In the bootloader configuration section, you can change that, and tell it to install booting in the MBR.
Or, if the default is different, keep that but check the box to install generic boot code in the MBR (might already be checked).
Your choice. But you do have to get into the boot setting section of install to make those changes.