2 disks, dual boot with Windows 10 and other OSes

[F. F. Knob]

Hello,
first of all I'm new to the Proxmox world and I already know dual boot is possible... I'm just trying ask your help to come up with a strategy for the following scenario (that I am designing to execute in the near future):

1. Disk 1: 240 (or 480, not sure yet) GB SSD, Proxmox VE 5.4 installed with the ISO installer, it can take the whole disk, no problem
2. Disk 2: 480 GB SSD
2.1. Partition 0: Windows 10
2.2. Partition 1: openSUSE (maybe)
2.3. Partition 2: Debian (maybe)
2.4. Partition N-1: other OSes...
2.5 Partition N: maybe 240 GB for data

My goal here is to have a Proxmox install up 90% of the time, a homelab, but I also would like to have a bootable Windows installation for gaming and other Linux OSes using the whole machine for working, Machine Learning experiments, ... Well, at this point I think it is clear that this will be "one machine to rule them all".

So, my questions:

1. Is it possible? (just to confirm)
2. In which order should I install the OSes?
3. Will the boot loader from Proxmox (is it Grub) manage all the OSes?
4. What should I do after each OS installation? (update-grub?)

Thank you

 

[Jack Freeman]

Equal noob here but have experience of this issue (and lost the data to boot!) short answer is yes it works perfectly, if you plan of using zfs I would caution against keeping your other drives conected during installation, I think this may have been how I corrupted a couple of existing partitions. So in short, as far as I can tell, no grub does not seem to pick the other partitions up to manage them, but this may merely be an update-grub type issue (still work in progress on that front) so may be entirely possible and I would fully install prox before building the full os array, this is certainly the way I went about it this last time and can happily boot into any of my bootable partitions via the bios selection. Hope this helps.

 

[Jack Freeman]

oh and btw, if you enjoy a little distro hopping for fun and have not yet delved into the world of antix, the latest mx18(.3 i think?) is simply stupendous, very much the pick of the distro crop for '19 and looking to enjoy a long vintage of ripening maturation as it has simply got better and better since breaking the distro horizon around mx16. It is phenomenaly fast as it runs as a partial ramdrive os loading the vast majority of its kernel/desktop components into ram at boot meaning it runs very nearly as fast as a live boot from usb as it does from pricey ssd drives so an excellent choice for aging harware and makkes the latest rigs sing like no other os does!!! all this and its a debian base too!!!

 

[F. F. Knob]

Thank you for your answer Jack!
Well, my luck is that I'll deploy this project in a brand new machine, so I have room for some boot-tragedy...
I

 

[Jack Freeman]

Thank you for your answer Jack!
Well, my luck is that I'll deploy this project in a brand new machine, so I have room for some boot-tragedy...
I

Always handy to have wriggle room when delving into an unknown new software, fortunately I only lost a windont install which I keep to remind myself occassionally 'why linux' and am filled with the urge to shower after booting into, suffice to say, I had nothing of any value data wise on there and lets face it, who doesn't enjoy those relaxing hours of watching 'getting things ready this will only take a moment' screens during a windont install (sigh!).