Install Sequence

[SkyBunny]

Hello, im doing little homework, i need to do a triple boot -sabayon, debian and suse (and i think its a older versions of this systems, but cannot install newer-dont ask why..), my question is, should i follow some install sequence (e.g. sabayon first, debian second, suse third) or it doesnt matter? 

[Wild Penquin]

Install the newest distribution or your "main OS" last. Manage bootloader trough that distribution. In other words: it is simplest to install the OS whose bootloader will be in charge last. Doin things in different order is possible, but this will make things simpler.

 

Otherwise, it doesn't matter.

Edited May 10, 2017 by Wild Penquin
missing "last"

[Urishima]

7 minutes ago, Wild Penquin said:

Install the newest distribution or your "main OS" last. Manage bootloader trough that distribution. In other words: it is simplest to install the OS whose bootloader will be in charge last. Doin things in different order is possible, but this will make things simpler.

 

Otherwise, it doesn't matter.

Could you elaborate on the how and why? Because as far as I know, you usually slap a bootloader on the thing as soon as you install something to boot and everything you add on after is (usually) automatically added to the list.

[SkyBunny]

10 minutes ago, Wild Penquin said:

Install the newest distribution or your "main OS" last. Manage bootloader trough that distribution. In other words: it is simplest to install the OS whose bootloader will be in charge last. Doin things in different order is possible, but this will make things simpler.

 

Otherwise, it doesn't matter.

there will be no main os, that pc will contain only those three OS..

[Wild Penquin]

28 minutes ago, Urishima said:

Could you elaborate on the how and why? Because as far as I know, you usually slap a bootloader on the thing as soon as you install something to boot and everything you add on after is (usually) automatically added to the list.

Because, per default, most (if not all) Linux distributions will install their own bootloader and overwrite whatever used to be in there before. This can be changed - and is quite trivial to do, for someone who knows what they are doing. But from the OPs question I concluded he might not know the details about what he/she is doing.

 

What you are presuming (subsequent installs are "added to the list") is actually incorrect. It is a valid approach and things can be made this way, but will require some work from the user.

 

With EFI things are handled a bit different, but still most distributions will install a bootloader (which is booted trough the EFI entry). But the OP didn't state if he/she is using EFI or Legacy boot (nor any hint about which one might be in use, such as the age of the gear he/she is using). Also, most desktop computers (EDIT: yet alone laptops - or, more specifically, the BIOS) do not show an EFI boot menu per default, even if there are several entries (I believe - someone correct me if this is not the case).

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention, that any boot loader installed by most (all?) linux distributions will search for other OSes already existing on the system and "add them to the list" (or more specifically, the scripts / configuration utilities in the installed distribution will do this, during install or if the user invokes them afterwards). I take this for granted, but then realized this might for some who are reading this thread.

[Wild Penquin]

On 10.5.2017 at 4:54 PM, SkyBunny said:

there will be no main os, that pc will contain only those three OS..

In this case, it doesn't really matter which one you choose. But preferably, install the newest / the one which will be most up-to-date last, as you stated some of the distributions might be an older version. You will want to manage booting trough this distribution - or at least, this is my recommendation. 

 

(If your gear is using EFI, you can actually have many different instances of a bootloader on the computer at the same time, although only one of them will boot "per default" - others will require booting trough a BIOS menu).

Edited May 11, 2017 by Wild Penquin
My thought did not come out clear. Very weird sentences. Hopefully less weird now =)

[Wild Penquin]

Actually, I believe the OP needs the information about bootloaders; the difference between Legacy / EFI boot, and the existence of bootmanagers and bootloaders, such as GRUB, rEFInd, and some tools such as efibootmgr etc...

 

You are going to need to know about these sooner or later, for example: if you are going to change the installation at some point in the future, or if something goes wrong.

 

If you don't want to / don't have time to / can't for whatever reason study the things mentioned above, go grab a spare HD, just install the distributions (in any order - just leave empty space for subsequent installs until you are installing the last one) and see if the end result works for you.

Edited May 10, 2017 by Wild Penquin
typos, minor wording

[Night_]

Once Grub (the bootloader) is installed once (usually done when installing any distro first) it can multiboot between whatever other distros you may wish to install in paralel. The tricky thing about having multiple distros though, is that each might have a different version for Grub in its repositories, which may cause situations during upgrades where each distro reinstalls and reconfigures Grub according to the package and configuration available to it.

 

The simplest way to avoid this would be to let the distro with the most up-to-date Grub package in its repository to install the bootloader and have all upgrades to it be done as part of its update cycle, where the rest of the distros won't have the Grub package installed at all. In such a case the other distros would depend on the Grub update script from the "main" distro to have their boot entries added and updated, which is usually done automatically.

 

So in a nutshell, what you will end up with is a single bootloader that is managed by a single distro and allows multibooting between all the other ones installed. The order of installation shouldn't matter as long as you make sure Grub gets auto-configured properly (which iirc should be done automatically and seamlessly anyway).