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I have 2 NVMe SSDs on my machine. The first one is fully and exclusively dedicated to Windows 10. The second one is fully and exclusively dedicated to Linux distros. I assembled the machine fairly recently, the motherboard is an Asus X570.

I installed Kubuntu on the 2nd one, it all works smoothly, I can choose between Kubuntu and Win10 via GRUB. My install was done without LVM.

My question is: how do I safely add more distros on the 2nd SSD? (such as Kali, Mint, Elementary OS, Arch, etc.)

Is it sufficient to boot via a live Ubuntu, run GParted to reduce Kubuntu's partition size, then boot via a USB stick and try to install the 2nd or 3rd distro on the empty partition?

in case it helps, here is the current output of lsblk:

nvme1n1     259:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
├─nvme1n1p1 259:1    0   512M  0 part 
└─nvme1n1p2 259:2    0   931G  0 part /
nvme0n1     259:3    0 931.5G  0 disk 
├─nvme0n1p1 259:4    0   529M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p2 259:5    0    99M  0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p3 259:6    0    16M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p4 259:7    0   300G  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p5 259:8    0   200G  0 part 
└─nvme0n1p6 259:9    0 430.9G  0 part

and the output of fdisk -l

Disk /dev/nvme1n1: 931.53 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: WDS100T3X0C                      
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt


Device           Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/nvme1n1p1    2048    1050623    1048576  512M EFI System
/dev/nvme1n1p2 1050624 1953523711 1952473088  931G Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 931.53 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB            
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt

Device              Start        End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1       2048    1085439   1083392   529M Windows recovery environment
/dev/nvme0n1p2    1085440    1288191    202752    99M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p3    1288192    1320959     32768    16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/nvme0n1p4    1320960  630466559 629145600   300G Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme0n1p5  630466560 1049896959 419430400   200G Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme0n1p6 1049896960 1953521663 903624704 430.9G Microsoft basic data
Annathema
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  • Yes, issues become with boot loader as last install is normally the default. And be sure to do all installs in UEFI boot mode. If Ubuntu offical flavor, UEFI entry will be "ubuntu", and some unoffical flavors use that also. Others may use grub or their name. I have multiple Ubuntu installs and keep one as main working install and have to either not install grub or edit /EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg to boot main working install. And I use larger shared data partition and mount that in all installs, so each install is in 25 or 30GB, or lots of installs on a 1TiB drive. Ubiquity only installs to first ESP – oldfred May 17 '20 at 20:11
  • thanks for your reply, @oldfred. so it is possible to shrink an ext4 partition without data loss/corruption? and I thought I needed to set the secure boot mode to "other OS" (which I did in order to install Kubuntu). Sorry if my questions seem basic, I am relatively new to Linux and I am actively trying to move away from Win10 – Annathema May 17 '20 at 20:42
  • You should be able to shrink without loss. But you always should have good backups of everything. Systems fail, users accidentally use wrong drive with dd and destroy it, etc. Many systems need UEFI update and SSD firmware update, even if not installing Linux. While discussing two drives, you can have data partition on same drive. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1013677/storing-data-on-second-hdd-mounting & https://askubuntu.com/questions/1058756/installing-all-applications-on-a-ssd-disk-and-putting-all-files-on-hdd-disk – oldfred May 17 '20 at 21:39
  • thank you, that was helpful :) – Annathema May 17 '20 at 23:15
  • ok, I managed to do everything: shrank partition with Gparted, installed Kali and everything works (Win10, Kubuntu and Kali). The only issue (which I think you tried to warn me about) is that booting is now done via Kali's GRUB. Is it possible to restore Kubuntu's GRUB? should I simply run update-grub on Kubuntu? – Annathema May 19 '20 at 18:44
  • or rather 'sudo grub-install /dev/nvme0n1' since that's where the EFI system is? – Annathema May 19 '20 at 20:03
  • If UEFI and Kali is not using "ubuntu" as UEFI description, you just need to change UEFI boot order. You can use efibootmgr sudo efibootmgr -o XXXX, YYYY etc for each entry. See man efibootmgr You can reinstall grub which just runs the efibootmgr commands. You also should be able to change boot order in UEFI settings, boot tab, not boot menu. – oldfred May 19 '20 at 20:29
  • thank you :) much appreciated – Annathema May 19 '20 at 21:05
  • it worked indeed, from the 'BIOS'/EUFI settings, and I was also able to install a third system (Arch) that Kubuntu's GRUB recognised (as well as Kali's GRUB but I don't use it). Booting to Windows or either of the 3 distros works like a charm, thanks again :) – Annathema May 25 '20 at 22:23
  • Managing multiple grubs can be an issue. I turn off os-prober and add my own boot stanza to 40_custom. http://askubuntu.com/questions/848119/how-to-update-grub-on-a-dual-boot-machine/848614#848614 How to: Create a Customized GRUB2 Screen that is Maintenance Free.- Cavsfan https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MaintenanceFreeCustomGrub2Screen & https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/grub.html#Multi_002dboot-manual-config & https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/CustomMenus – oldfred May 25 '20 at 23:27
  • thank you! this is a bit beyond my current understanding/skills, I'll take a look and try to make sense of it :) – Annathema Jun 05 '20 at 22:00

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