Shulou(Shulou.com)06/01 Report--

In this issue, the editor will bring you the experience of installing multiple Linux distributions and Fedora 21 on the same hard disk in Linux. The article is rich in content and analyzes and narrates it from a professional point of view. I hope you can get something after reading this article.

Previously, the hassle with multiple Linux distributions was mainly done on virtual machines. My desktop computer is more powerful, there is no problem playing with the virtual machine, but the laptop is not. To wrestle with multiple versions of Linux on my laptop, you have to consider installing different Linux distributions on the same hard drive. It is relatively simple to co-exist Windows and Linux on the same hard disk, just install Windows first and then install Linux. Linux installation will help you take care of everything. What happens if you install several different distributions of Linux at the same time? Will they conflict?

After my experience, I can come to the conclusion that it is easy to install multiple Linux on the same hard drive, and the powerful Grub will help you take care of everything. However, the hard disk partition scheme must be designed first.

My design is like this: directly divide the hard disk into four areas, four are all primary partitions, the first three partitions install a Linux for each partition, and the last partition does the swap partition. As for / boot partition, / home partition and so on, I don't want anything. The advantage of this partitioning scheme is simplicity. Some people may say: aren't you afraid of data loss if you upgrade or back up? What I want to say is: on the personal computer, this is not a problem, backup I use USB drive or mobile hard drive, but also must be USB 3.0, upgrade I usually directly cover, which day the system is not comfortable, want to reinstall, do not hesitate to reinstall, just do it. I have tried to install the Linux system on the USB flash drive, this is no problem, but can not boot from the USB 3.0interface, can only boot from the USB 2.0interface, lose the speed advantage, I do not want to play the USB disk system.

Note:

1. You can only use MBR partitioned tables, not GPT partitioned tables, because with GPT partitioned tables, the first partition must be mounted to / boot/efi, resulting in conflicts. For the question of MBR partition table and GPT partition table, and whether to use LVM, please refer to my other essay, "traps and Countermeasures of hard disk Partition".

two。 Only the last Linux can specify the swap partition at the time of installation. The previously installed Linux can only specify the partition where the root directory is located. After all the systems have been installed, modify the / etc/fstab file in the corresponding system to add the swap partition.

I decided to install CentOS 7 first, then Fedora 21, and finally Ubuntu 14.10, all on the desktop. Here is the process:

The first step is to install CentOS 7. After entering the installation interface, be sure to configure the partition yourself, as shown below:

The second step is to partition the first partition of the hard disk and mount it to the root directory of the system, as shown below:

Then continue to install the system, and the installer warns that no partitions are swapped, which may affect performance. Don't worry about it, just continue with the installation. There is no doubt about installing a system, and I won't talk about it in the follow-up process.

Step 3: install Fedora 21, choose to configure the partition yourself, or mount only one partition to the root directory, as shown below:

As you can see, the installer has automatically detected the CentOS 7 system on the first partition. After clicking the "Update Settings" button, the effect is as follows:

Continue to install the system, still ignoring the warning that there is no swap partition.

After the system is installed, restart it, and you can see the startup interface of Grub. You can choose between the two systems:

Step 4, install Ubuntu 14.04. After entering the partition interface, I start to take screenshots as follows:

Or willfully choose to configure your own partition, as shown below:

Still divide a primary partition and mount it to the root directory. Since this is the last system, you can finally get a swap partition, as shown in the following figure:

MBR only supports up to four primary partitions, and I don't want to make more partitions, so I made a happy decision. They are all main partitions, so logical partitions are not needed. The remaining few hundred megabytes of hard disk space is gorgeously unavailable. As shown below:

As far as I can see, the Ubuntu installer does a better job of partitioning the hard drive than Fedora and CentOS. Needless to say, continue to install the system happily. After the installation is complete, please take a look at the following startup interface:

The fifth step is to enter the CentOS system and the Fedora system respectively, and modify the / etc/fstab file to set the swap partition. Before setting up, the output of the free command and the contents of the / etc/fstab file are as follows:

Add a line to the / etc/fstab file, and the contents of this line can refer to the / etc/fstab file in Ubuntu. After the setup is complete, the contents of the / etc/fstab file and the output of the free command are as follows:

Indicates that a swap partition is successfully shared by three systems. The mission was successfully completed.

The first experience of Fedora 21

Of the above three systems, Fedora 21 is the latest, released in December 14, while CentOS 7 is in June and Ubuntu 14.10 is in October. And for the first time, the release of Fedora 21 has no ticket skipping. Both Fedora 19 and Fedora 20 were released after ticket skipping.

The first highlight of Fedora 21 is the ability to use Wayland. It is said that the efficiency of Wayland graphics is higher than that of X Window, and it is said that Wayland will replace X Window, but I think the time is not ripe for the time being. If you want to try it, select it on the login screen, as shown below:

Whether it's Wayland or X Window, you don't have to worry about it as long as you're not a programmer writing the underlying graphics library.

Many people complain that the interface of Gnome 3 is not as beautiful as the classic interface of Gnome 2, which is actually a misunderstanding. If you want to use the classic interface, as shown in the image above, you can choose when you log in. In fact, the interface of Gnome 3 is quite good, I am not used to it before, I feel ugly, the title of the window and the menu bar do not have a clear distinction, the whole window seems to be monolithic, but look carefully, in fact, this default theme is not bad, there is a faint halo around the window. But then again, compared with Ubuntu, Fedora does not make much effort on the user interface, it can only be regarded as integrating the results of the Gnome community into the system, without any further optimization and beautification, and the beautification of the desktop system is a bit out of reach for ordinary users.

In general, I use Fedora to change window theme and GTK theme. I like Clearlooks-classic (window theme, which belongs to clearlooks package) and TraditionalOK (GTK theme, which belongs to mate package). From these two names, you can see that I am more nostalgic (both Classic and Traditional). In Fedora 20, the two themes work well together, and there seems to be a slight flaw in Fedora 21. I have never messed with the theme of Gnome-shell before, this time I changed the theme of Gnome-shell by the way, but I only tried a few of them that can be found in the official source. I didn't try it widely on the theme website of Gnome-shell, and finally I chose Zukitwo. As shown below:

I feel that the pace of Fedora's half-yearly release is a little too fast, and it doesn't care whether the interface is beautiful or not. There is no graphics driver for NVIDIA in Fedora's software source, indicating that Fedora really doesn't pay much attention to the desktop experience. What's a little comforting is that Gnome-Terminal supports transparent backgrounds again, and Gnome-Terminal has a Solarized color scheme to choose from, and the console above is using the Solarized color scheme. For more information about the Solarized color scheme, you can refer to my article: "create your own Vim". Relatively speaking, the interface of Ubuntu is much more beautiful, after all, the Canonical behind others has a clear goal and is constantly making efforts. However, Ubuntu also has a painful place, that is, I still use OpenJDK 7 and Eclipse 3.8, and do not support Java 8, which makes me feel bad.

In Fedora 21, Eclipse is 4.4 and OpenJDK is 8, so install an Eclipse and write a Lambda to test it. The results are good, as shown below:

The Eclipse in the figure above uses the Classic theme. Eclipse perfectly supports Java 8, but the only drawback is that Eclipse is unstable and often crashes. But it seems to be the problem with OpenJDK 8 headless that caused Eclipse to collapse. It doesn't matter. If you want to try Java 8, you have to stick to it. In the new version, Eclipse also provides Dark themes, but it is more comfortable to use with the system's Ambiance window theme and GTK theme. Ambiance theme is the default theme in Ubuntu, but performs better in Ubuntu than in Fedora. The only disadvantage when using Eclipse's Dark theme is that the scroll bar of Ambiance is not Dark enough, which is a bit inconsistent, as shown in the following figure:

This is the experience of installing multiple Linux distributions and Fedora 21 on the same hard disk in Linux shared by Xiaobian. If you happen to have similar doubts, please refer to the above analysis to understand. If you want to know more about it, you are welcome to follow the industry information channel.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.