Dual boot Ubuntu and Linux Mint | Dual booting two GNU/Linux distros.
Requirements
When someone mentions dual boot, often it’s referred to dual booting a GNU/Linux distro and Windows, or Windows and MAC OS X. In this post we will dual boot two Linux distributions and show you step by step how it’s done. This time we will show you how to dual boot Ubuntu and Linux Mint on a single drive. In this example, Ubuntu is pre-installed and we installed Linux Mint afterwards and setup the dual boot.
The process can be done vice versa since both systems are based on the same distributions and have the same installation. You can also check out tutorials how to dual boot these systems with Windows 10 following these links Dual boot Linux Mint and Windows 10, Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 10.
Please note, before you proceed if you already use GNU/Linux as your daily driver on your PC, backup everything first.
Requirements for this process:
- Empty space on HDD
- Linux mint bootable USB
Underneath is also a video tutorial for this process:
Procedure
Starting Linux Mint installation
Plug in your bootable Linux mint USB, restart the PC and boot the Live CD. Once the Live CD is booted up, start the installation.
First two screen will be prompts to setup your language and keyboard layout.
On this screen, installation will prompt you to install additional drivers, codecs etc. This is usually recommended step to do.
Formating partitions and dual boot setup
This is a very important screen. On this screen we need to choose how Linux Mint will install. The most easiest option is the first one. As we can see here, Linux Mint installation already detected that Ubuntu is pre-installed. This means that Linux Mint installation will prepare the OS and install Linux Mint alongside Ubuntu without harming and affecting installed Ubuntu and the files you have on it. That’s why we will choose the first option.
On this screen, we need to setup partitions and hard disk space. The process is here simple. In the first field we need to select drive on which we are installing Linux Mint. Since, this is situation where we have only one HDD, our only one drive will be selected. Bellow is a graphic representation of our Ubuntu OS and Linux Mint installation and how much space they have or will get after we finish setting up the partitions.
By default, the installation will divide hard disk space in 50:50 for each OS. In order to allocate more hard disk space to one OS, we just need to move mouse cursor in between the borders of our two OS installations, that border is a slider and we need to move it to one side.
After we finished setting the partitions, click continue and we will get a prompt with a pop up and it will ask us to confirm the changes.
User account setup
Next step is to setup the user account and and computer name.
After you setup the user account, the installation will start and it will take some time. Usually it takes around 15 minutes to finish but all that will depend of the HDD we have.
Once the installation is finished, we’ll get a prompt a again and it will ask to restart the PC. Remove the bootable USB and restart the PC.
FInishing up
As soon as the PC restarts, we need to have this screen. This is the GRUB bootloader. On this menu we choose which OS we want to boot.
So, if you get this screen, it means that you succeeded in setting up the dual boot and have installed the Linux Mint.
Summary
This was the process how to dual boot Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Thanks to installers of Linux and Ubuntu the process is nowadays simple to execute but still it’s important to mention again to watch out on which partition you’re installing which system and always have backup ready.
Thank you very much for your time…