Installing Tumbleweed alongside with debian

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi everyone, new forum user, and I hope a new openSUSE user soon…
I’ve been using Gnu/linux for a long time, but I’m not a expert.

At the moment I’m using Debian testing as only OS on my laptop, but for reasons I wanna also install openSUSE. Since I had spent a lot of time to configuring my system, I don’t want to format everything; my intention is to use both os alongside till I had configure the new installation, then erase Debian.

I had already tried to do so, shrinking the main partition but when it comes the Tumbleweed partition manager I don’t know how to set it.

At the moment I have:
partition1 boot/efi
partition3 root
partition2 swap.

I’ve already backup /home, and cloned the disk.

Thank you in advance.

2

It isn’t clear what you are asking.

Perhaps you should post the output from

fdisk -l

and then tell us what you are trying to do.

The expert partitioner can be confusing.

3

“my intention is to use both os alongside”. If that is what you want then use openSUSE in a vm. As a dual boot you only run one at a time. As a vm, you can run the two together.

I run openSUSE and have 5 or so other distros in vms; including windows,. Then I can try the same things on different distros at the same time.

tom kosvic

4

Thanks.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear.
My intention is to completely switch to OpenSUSE, eliminating Debian.
But I didn’t want to do it immediately, because I spent a lot of time configuring Debian according to my tastes and needs. To always continue to have a system already configured, I wanted to dual boot with OpenSUSE and configure it in my free time, while using Debian for various needs.

Here the outcome of fdisk -l:


Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 476,94 GiB, 512110190592 bytes, 1000215216 sectors
Disk model: Lexar SSD NM620 512GB                   
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: DD5BCAFE-DD25-4F12-AC72-87ACBF5AE897

Device             Start        End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1      2048    7813119   7811072   3,7G EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 961153024 1000214527  39061504  18,6G Linux swap
/dev/nvme0n1p3   7813120  961153023 953339904 454,6G Linux filesystem

Partition table entries are not in disk order.

My doubts come during the partitioning phase: after having resized the Debian root and created some free space, how should I set up the various partitions? Should I use existing /boot and /swap? do I need to create other partitions?

5

Use the existing EFI partition, but mount it at “/boot/efi”.

Also use the existing swap.

Reusing these should not interfere with Debian. If you use the expert partitiioner, DO NOT reformat those partitions.

1 Like
6

I don’t use the same boot looks like it will spell trouble but I use the same swap on dual boot. This is using ext 4. See mine

This is the first linux system

Device         Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sda1       2048     616447     614400  300M EFI System
/dev/sda2     616448  210331647  209715200  100G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3  210331648  420046847  209715200  100G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda4  420046848 1468622847 1048576000  500G Linux filesystem

This is the second linux system

Device         Start       End   Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sdb1       2048 167766015 167763968   80G Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb2  167766016 377479167 209713152  100G Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb3  377479168 378009599    530432  259M EFI System

This where the single swap use by both os

Device          Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sdc1        2048 1887438847 1887436800  900G Linux filesystem
/dev/sdc2  1887438848 1953523711   66084864 31.5G Linux swap

I am sing two SSD and one rotating disk

7

There’s no single right way to partition. Partitioning is as much art as science. I suggest to use the expert partitioner to resize p3, then create at least one new partition p4 onto which to install the TW root filesystem. As already mentioned, reuse p1 and p2 without reformatting either of them, or reformatting p3. If you wish to keep personal data segregated from system data to facilitate backups, or other reasons, you could create that p4 using just a portion of the space that resizing p3 freed, say 60G or so, then create a p5 in the remainder to mount either on /home/, or in a subdirectory in /home/, or elsewhere according to personal preference.

Don’t forget in bootloader configuration to check the box “Probe foreign OS” so that Debian is included in your TW boot menu…

8

Thanks to all.

In the end I resized the Debian main partition (using another live os, because I didn’t find that function in the installer) and used the same /boot and /swap without formatting and it worked flawless.

Debian is present in Grub without any intervention. If there was an “os probe” option it was already selected, but I didn’t see it.

Thanks again

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