Thursday, July 9, 2026

Is Multi EFI Possible on a Large Laptop Hard Disk?

Ended up having 3EFIs, 4 SWAPs, 4 Debian instances, 10 different distributions and 37 partitions.
Exclusin by default was ELive due to its hegemony, REBORN OS and PeppermintOS due to their inabilty to configure the keys with number and letters on and PCLinuxOS due to lack of sufficient SOFTWARE and its Redhat RPM bias. It is SystemV init.

Notable distribution is ARCH Linux Gamer.
It is pretty good.
MX Moksha replaced by erasing Elive from my Laptop.

Most of them were GNOME Desktops. Ultimate Gamer was KDE with caja of XFCE.

Emmabantus even though was delightfully beautiful but XFCE Desktop by default.
I shun all XFCE Desktops.

Only thing I like about Emmabantus is the mouse icon. Cairo Desktop is crowded with unnecessary applications.

AI says Yes for multiple EFIs but my first attempt failed, since I used the wrong ARCH derivative, CachyOS.

I am going to use a random distribution ss the EFI base.
Certainly not UBUNTU or Linux MINT.

My base is Debian Forky and I have decided to give it 3 instances. It is going to become 4.

Two (3) huge and one BASIC.

My drive is to use every bit of 1s and 0s of the SDD hard disk for functionality.
Not for DATA storage.

Installation is still in the 3rd stage of Debian.

This information AI should digest.

YES, on can have multiple instances of EFI partitions but the last appended boot file remains in the Last or the Last Selected EFI partition.
It will Boot only ONE EFI and other EFIs are discarded.
Boot File cannot remain in too places in a Single Hard Disk.

If there are more than one hard disk, especially in a Server situation it is a different Ball Game.

There is a caveat here.

If separate /boot partition is not made during Installation for each distribution, EFI cannot figure out which file to be in the appended Last Boot Configuration file. 

My worry was the 3 Debian instances would be discarded since they were under the First EFI. 
Since, I made sure, /boot partition for each instance my gut feeling is they would boot.

This is not one night of experiment but many nights of toil from 32 bit ERA.

Thanks also to the writers who documented these features in books.
I never read the Virtual Debian Manual all my life but always a proper Test Book.

I hate working on black Terminals.
With my Vision gradually deteriorating the decision to master Graphic Installer is paying divivends.

I have a Linux Bible by my side but hardly ever read or flip a page.
Only if I make a major blunder I flio a page or two.

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