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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Install Linux distros without grub?? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I use rEFInd as my boot manager and sometimes I like to dual boot a new linux distro (just to try out) which I install with a live USB. Unfortunately, after installing, GRUB has always taken the reigns and it becomes a slight inconvenience to get back to rEFInd every time.

Is there some trick that can request grub not to install?

[What prompted me to ask was I tried KaOS yesterday, and during installation it asked what bootloader i wanted and included the option for 'none'.]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I tried to use rEFInd years ago on my first UEFI machine, gave up and ended with GRUB... maybe it was just a crap setup and I need to try again...

But, how about backing up just the boot sectors / EFI partition with a dd command and then just restoring it again? Not a slick solution, I agree

TBH, if a distro doesn't give me options during install then I'd probably stop there as every update to GRUB could be automatically installed and blat your machine again.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

But, how about backing up just the boot sectors / EFI partition with a dd command and then just restoring it again? Not a slick solution, I agree

Unfortunately that does nothing on a UEFI system. There's no boot record any more (just a partition table) and even if there were (ie it's an MBR drive instead of GPT) it would be ignored under UEFI.

But in the case of rEFInd and GRUB, both would actually happily live side by side, what's changing is just the default bootloader selection in the UEFI. So all you need to go into your UEFI settings and point it back to your choice of bootloader. No need to worry about reinstalling the bootloader, messing with config files, etc.