this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
146 points (97.4% liked)

PC Gaming

8664 readers
554 users here now

For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki

Rules:

  1. Be Respectful.
  2. No Spam or Porn.
  3. No Advertising.
  4. No Memes.
  5. No Tech Support.
  6. No questions about buying/building computers.
  7. No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
  8. No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
  9. No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
  10. Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It is my understanding that Linux Mint will install the bootloader on the internal drive regardless of whether you tell it to install the remainder of the OS onto the external drive. You can change the boot partition wherever you want, but I suspect that does not affect its end behavior. I would like the external drive to contain the bootloader such that my internal drive isn't touched at all by my fiddling with Linux. I currently have a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD in an external USB case, Mint installed, but with no compatible bootloader. Is there a way to sort the bootloader problem?

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

This will depend on the Linux distro, some of the installers make it very clear which drive the bootloader will go to, and others won't - more so in the case of BIOS/MBR based systems.

Systems that use UEFI should only have a bootloader where the /boot partition (which should have the partition type "ESP", generally labeled in the installer) - however during the installation of this it may modify your PC's boot order to try to boot from this first. Both legacy BIOS and UEFI systems should have a way to change the boot priority however, so that this won't be a problem.

Sadly it's a bit hard to be specific since every distro's installer is different, and I haven't used Linux Mint in 8+ years to know what their installer's behavior is.