Dual Boot Puppy with other Linux

[stevie pup]

I did a search for this as I thought someone's bound to have asked it before. Unfortunately I didn't find much and what I did find went straight over my head. So apologies if I've been looking for wrong thing or in wrong place.

So, my question. What is the simplest way to have a frugally installed Puppy dual boot with another (mainstream) Linux distro?

Does each need to be on it's own partition? Once installed, then what? Grub2, Grub4, or something else? Any other steps to take? Laptop is Legacy Bios only, so no UEFI rubbish to upset things.

I had a go at this some time last year, can't remember details but it failed miserably. Probably because I hadn't a clue what I was doing. Anyway, decided to give it another go.

[dancytron]

You already have a Puppy frugal install?

Just copy the contents of the puppy iso to it's own directory on the same partition as your existing Puppy frugal install.

Then show us a copy of either your menu.1st file (grub4dos probably Windows 7 era or before pc) or grub.cfg (newer) and we'll help you modify it to boot your new Puppy.

If you want to search, this is called a "manual frugal install".

Dan

[stevie pup]

@dancytron

Yes I already have a couple of frugal installed Puppies, but I think you've misunderstood my question. So let me put it this way.

Imagine I've got a hard drive with nothing on it. Then I want to put, for example, MX Linux and Fossapup both on the same drive. Where do I start?

[rockedge]

Install MX Linux on the HDD first. Then manually make a directory in the base filesystem of the MX Linux installation named what ever you like that will contain the base file system of the Puppy Linux you want to use.

For example /mnt/sda1 has MX Linux installed, then create the directory /F96-CE_4 and place all of the files from the ISO into this directory.

Find and open the grub.cfg or menu.lst that is within the boot loader partition. Modify the file by adding a boot stanza that points to and launches the Frugal install of Puppy Linux.

Now when you boot there should be two choices of OS to choose from, MX Linux or Puppy Linux.

[wiak]

Install MX Linux on the HDD first. Then manually make a directory in the base filesystem of the MX Linux installation named what ever you like that will contain the base file system of the Puppy Linux you want to use.

For example /mnt/sda1 has MX Linux installed, then create the directory /F96-CE_4 and place all of the files from the ISO into this directory.

Find and open the grub.cfg or menu.lst that is within the boot loader partition. Modify the file by adding a boot stanza that points to and launches the Frugal install of Puppy Linux.

Now when you boot there should be two choices of OS to choose from, MX Linux or Puppy Linux.

I don't know if MX Linux uses full grub hierarchy like Linux Mint does. If so, an alternative and probably preferred way to do the above would be to open the file /etc/grub.d/40_custom in an editor (as root user), append the entry with the boot stanza that points to and launches the above Frugal install of Puppy Linux, and finally run command update-grub (from a running MX Linux), which will automatically put the new stanza at end of that grub.cfg for you. Again, this alternative may or may not apply depending if grub2 being used and if the likes of /etc/grub.d/40_custom (or similar) exists.

That is how I do it with my full installed Linux Mint set up; like rockedge suggested I installed Linux Mint first (which also automatically detected Windows 11 on my computer and correctly set up its grub2 for booting that too), then from running Linux Mint I did the /etc/grub.d/40_custom additions followed by update-grub. I also made sure secure boot was off in UEFI config (like-bios), and thereafter all just works for me.

At the end of the day, on my own system I'm therefore using the grub2 provided by Linux Mint automatically so didn't need any grub2config or any other Puppy utility.

[PeteAir]

Wiak, I have Linux mint installed on a ssd/sda5 , I dropped bookworm10.6 into sda5. I went to 40 custom and put the same stanza that was on menu.lst from grub4dos, changing the uuid. Ran update-grub and it did not find puppy. Suggestions?
Thanks pete

Never mind, I used grub2puppy to make the boot loader on a flash drive. Worjks perfect>