Hello, new here and to Linux. I want to leave Windows on my C drive for now, but I have a SSD drive with nothing else on it. Can I install OpenMandriva (Rome) there without partitioning anything - I did look over the install instructions but was not clear on which option to choose for this.
Thanks!
OpenMandriva Lx version:
Desktop environment (KDE, LXQT…):
Description of the issue (screenshots if relevant):
Relevant informations (hardware involved, software version, logs or output…):
if you have two drives ( physical drive ) , you can check before installing:
sudo parted -l
sudo lsblk -fs
inxi -Fza
sudo efibootmgr -vyou have to understand that your UEFI motherboard will have to change for install and after :
it may required a new profile for boot in your UEFI ( one for windows , another for linux )
Welcome! We are glad to see you and hope you make this your home.
Hey, welcome to openmandriva ! If you’re a linux beginner, I recommend that before you start installing openmandriva you disconnect your main C internal drive to avoid any accidental data loss. After that, you probably need to boot in the bios and disable secure boot, which is an option that prevents booting linux systems. Then, you just have to follow the installation procedure after downloadind and flashing the openmandriva .iso file on your USB drive with the help of a software like rufus.ie. If the SSD is the largest and only internal disk, the SSD should be preselected for you, else you can just manually select it in the installer disk selection page amongst all the other disks plugged in. You don’t need to do any manual partitioning before the install. Once you confirm and are at the end of the setup, the SSD will be partitioned automatically to install openmandriva. The disk you selected in the installer, all data on it will be erased in order to install openmandriva, that is why I recommend disconnecting the C drive before the install process to avoid any mistakes as internal drives are pre-selected by default and you did not mention if you SSD was external. After the install, you can reconnect your C drive and define which OS to boot in the BIOS or choose on each boot. Welcome to the community and if you need any help, don’t hesitate to ask around 
I have been doing this a long time and I still like to disconnect the drives I am not installing on. It’s ugly watching a grown man cry.
@simply4est I have been doing this and testing isos since OpenMandriva Lx began. What I write here I know works for the vast majority of users the vast majority of the time. And we had a preponderance of non-technical users before January of this year.
For new users not familiar with Linux the partitioning is always the most difficult to understand step to installing OMLx whether it be ROME (rolling) or Rock.
You need to know the name of your drive, it will be something like /dev/sdx or /dev/nvme0nx where ‘x’ is the actual number of the drive. This one command inxi -D will show you the hard disk drives like this (my laptop as example):
$ inxi -D
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 953.87 GiB used: 241.84 GiB (25.4%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: SK Hynix model: PC801 NVMe 1TB size: 953.87 GiB
ID-1 shows the name (or path) of the drive, in my case /dev/nvme0n1. Yes this command shows all drives. Install to your preferred drive at this step in OMLx Calamares installer where is says “Select Storage Device”:
Select “Erase Disk” and you will see this:
If you have less than 8GB RAM you might select “Swap (No hibernate)” otherwise you probably don’t need it so just go with “No swap”. The file system type selection just leave at the default ext4. Try this but keep in mind that after you learn more your needs may change and you may want re-install in a different way. Give yourself time to learn this for yourself. Note at the bottom where it shows you how it will partition the drive.
For Windows users sometimes when the installer installs Grub2 boot loader it does not pick up the Windows system. This is almost always corrected by booting into the new OMLx system and simply opening Konsole (terminal) and run this sudo update-grub2. That command will show what systems it recognizes as it writes the new grub2 script. If it does not pick up the Windows system don’t worry, just post a question in a new thread with a descriptive title.
Windows users can, if they want to, mount and use their Windows storage partition. If you decide you want to do that go ahead and install as above and ask about that in a separate thread with a descriptive title and we can show how to do that. You may figure out how to do this the first time you open Dolphin file manager.
The other advice in the posts above is valid but I would not concern myself with any of it unless you encounter a specific problem. Most users don’t.
If user decides to re-install you will need to either have your important data on a separate partition (like Windows NTFS storage partition) or have a way to back up your data to something like a USB flash drive or other storage device and then you would copy it back after the re-install. This takes a little bit of time but it is worth it in the long run. Users should be backing up their data somewhere in the first place in which case you are already prepared for this. How one does this is determined by how much storage space they use. If you trust the cloud you can use some option there. Actually something in the cloud would work fine for this if you copy the data to wherever and copy it back right after install then remove your stuff from the cloud instance.
I hope this helps @simply4est and other users coming from Windows. Keep things simple at first and learn your way around OMLx (the Lx is an abbreviation for Linux) before getting more complicated. And only get more complicated if you have a need to.
Man, you’re awesome.
Thanks.
Edit: I should say what works for the vast majority of user the vast majority of the time does not mean 100%. There are exceptions. And forums tend to make these exceptions look like the norm when they are not. Forums also attract like honey users that tend over complicate or those that just manage to always have problems.
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