Why do you want to do this? If it's just to try out different distributions, I would suggest using per-distro virtual machines or USB drives instead.
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Well its more than just trying them out, in want to learn and actually use them too. Like as work stations, not just like a live image where you can browse around. Sometimes in get bored of my debian distro and I dont want to just delete it and reinstall another type, ya know? I'd rather have all three where I can actually use and work on them and they all stay in tact and keep all my settings and files and programs, like how a normal desktop installed distro does. More of a learning and adventure thing than anything. One day I could focus on manjaro and then the next work on fedora or if I get bored and just want to casually use my computer I could just hop on my more comfortable debian distro. Idk maybe it seems weird to others, its just how my brain works. I want to be proficient in the big three, plus opensuse eventually too.
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Do you have a recommended virtualization platform for such a project?
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Why?
Triple booting is a pita, moreso if you don't know how to partition a disk. I'd want any laptop encrypted, which adds further complexity to the triple boot.
If you wanna browse, research, watch videos and tinker just install a distro. If you wanna spend time switching your system off and on again over and over and over again to find out what's working/broken go for the triple boot.
Docker could be worth a shot. You can 'docker pull fedora/arch/debina/whatever' and can play around with the base systems. Alpine takes up about 6mib so isn't too resource intensive if you need to nuke it a few hundred times to get up and running.
But with virtualization or containerization, is there persistence for the distros? I think thats the right word. Like does it remember everything I tweak or install? I'm not necessarily wanting to just browse new distros, I want to learn them and use them too and if a VM wipes the image every time, thats not useful for me
You should be able to share a significant fraction of your home directory.
Do I basically just start off installing one distro on the full hard drive and then when I go to install the others, just choose the “run alongside” option? or would I have to manually partition things out?
If you install one distro on full hard drive you won't have room anymore for the rest, if you want multiple operating systems on your machine you need to partition manually with some planning ahead on how to allocate the space.
Any thing to worry about with conflicts between different types of distros
They don't interfere with each other, they don't even "see" each other once you booted into one, they only share the boot manager.
That being said, what you intend to do was the only way to learn many years ago when computers weren't as powerful as they are today (I did learn that way), but today ANY PC can manage virtual machines, they are much more practical and can save you a lot of time when you mess things up, because whatever you do is confined within the VM and doesn't affect your PC as a whole.
Install Virtualbox, have a look at how it works and use that to do all experiments you want, you can even learn to multiboot inside a single VM, without the risk of messing up your system.