Dual boot Porteus 3 and Linux Mint 17

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tmoulder99
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Distribution: Portues 3 Mint 17
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Dual boot Porteus 3 and Linux Mint 17

Post#1 by tmoulder99 » 25 Jul 2014, 19:13

I've got a 4-year-old laptop that runs Mint 17 XFCE fairly well, but I am envious of the lightning speed of my wife's new Chromebook. So I did a bit of digging and trying different minimal distros, and found Porteus LXDE.

Wow! Talk about fast! And it's full linux! And it runs my ^#$#%^&^# Canon Pixma MX340 OUT OF THE BOX! Okay, this distro is officially awesome.

Here's the thing though - I cannot fully break away from Mint, since I need the full functionality for some projects I work on. However, I want to install Porteus as a dual boot for everyday use because of it's speed. I don't like having to carry a USB stick everywhere, or having it sticking out the side of my laptop.

There is a guide here on the site for setting up dual boot with windows, but I could not find anything recent about setting up dual boot with another linux distro. What I did find was beyond my skill level. My first fumbling attempt left me booting Porteus from a 20GB partition on my HDD, but wiped out grub2 and made it so I could no longer boot Mint. Recovered from that (by reinstalling Mint), but not sure where to go from here. The partition and Porteus installation are still on the hard drive.

So can someone provide me some instructions on the steps needed to set this up?

Thanks!

TM

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Ed_P
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Re: Dual boot Porteus 3 and Linux Mint 17

Post#2 by Ed_P » 26 Jul 2014, 03:34

Can you reinstall grub2?
Ed

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brokenman
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Re: Dual boot Porteus 3 and Linux Mint 17

Post#3 by brokenman » 26 Jul 2014, 12:01

but wiped out grub2 and made it so I could no longer boot Mint. Recovered from that (by reinstalling Mint)
So I assume you have grub2 reinstalled by this statement. All you need to do is copy the file from the porteus ISO (porteus and boot) onto a partition of your computer (let's say /mnt/sda6). Now add the appropriate entry into your grub config file (pointing to /mnt/sda6) and update grub. Please search the forum for 'grub2' for the correct line to add. There are MANY threads on this.
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tmoulder99
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Posts: 14
Joined: 25 Jul 2014, 14:14
Distribution: Portues 3 Mint 17
Location: Kentucky

Re: Dual boot Porteus 3 and Linux Mint 17

Post#4 by tmoulder99 » 26 Jul 2014, 14:12

Thanks guys, that was the advice I needed. Now dual booting Mint 17 and Porteus Mate!

TM

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