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If you dual-boot different distributions and want to keep old versions of distros for upgrades, how do you proceed? (feddit.org)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Say you are dual-booting Debian and Arch and want to upgrade Debian oldstable to Debian stable. But you want to keep the old installation available as a fall-back option. And you also want to re-use your configuration files and dot files, but in a way that incompatible changes to your dot files in the new Debian or Arch version do never break the old program versions.

How do you do that ?

(I describe my own approach in a comment below.)

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[-] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 0 points 2 weeks ago
  • having a second system that boots can be very handy if something breaks - for example one can chroot intp the other system and fix a missing grub install
  • when disk space becomes scarce, one csn mount it where it makes sense
[-] juipeltje@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Couldn't you just keep a live iso on a usb stick for this?

[-] Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

You just need a bootable usb stick, id recommend ventoy

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

No:

  1. Every single modern distro keeps multiple known-good previously running copies of the system to boot back into
  2. The disk space argument is just insane. Having TWO versions of an OS takes TWICE as much space as having one. I don't even get what you mean. You can mount a disk anywhere at any time
  3. No part of any installed Linux distro can get into a state where it cannot be accessed, unless you encrypt or delete your entire disk without thinking
  4. BTRFS or ZFS can shift back time or keep snapshots, so none of your reasoning is needed at all. Same with immutable distros.
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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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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