Expert computer system administrators often wants to install multiple operating systems (such as Windows 7/8/10/11/etc, and different version/flavors of Ubuntu, MX-Linux, Redhat, CentoOS, etc) and try running live systems directly without installation (for testing hardware compatibility), all using one single harddisk. For this purpose, the right tool to use is Ventoy and MX-Linux.
Ventoy allows directly copying over OS-installation ISO images onto the harddisk and booting into any one ISO image. You can select which ISO image to boot into during reboot. At the same time, the harddisk can be used to store other user data.
MX-Linux allows snap-shoting a fully-installed version of Ubuntu/Debian with all packages and configurations, so you do not need to install all useful softwares and packages again and again on each computer. Moreover, the the snap-shot ISO image can run in live mode without installation, so you can test the hardware compatibility of a fully installed OS.
Tips for Ventoy:
- specify a folder for storing boot ISO images, so that other folders (that are used for storing data) will not be scanned during Ventoy boot select: create a JSON file at /ventoy/ventoy.json , put the following configuration info in the JSON file
{
"control": [
{ "VTOY_DEFAULT_SEARCH_ROOT": "/ISO" }
]
}Tips for MX-Linux:
-
