Ask HN: What is the best way to configure a Mac/Linux dual-boot

[greattsclerouse]

I'd like to set-up my various MacBooks with a dual-boot set-up that minimizes duplication. i.e. if I want to set-up Darling in linux, I'd like to re-use whatever I can from the Mac install vs. redownloading. I'd like to do this for user home, music, downloads, etc. but APFS is a pain and I hear lots of issues. Anyone have the secret sauce or some advice on best practices?

[rahimnathwani]

Create an exfat partition called 'data' and mount it on both MacOS and Linux.

Then create your Documents, Downloads etc. folders on it, and use symbolic links.

e.g. on MacOS, do something like this for each 'shared' folder:

rm -rf /home/rahim/Downloads

mkdir /Volumes/data/Downloads

ln -s /Volumes/data/Downloads /home/rahim

[rbreaves]

Exfat is not good for the kinds of ssd’s that go into computers. Flash drives yes though.

Imo it depends on what’s important to you but from purely a data recovery standpoint I’d say pick NTFS & use tuxera on the Mac & Linux has write support built in. This way you can have a 3rd partition w/ data shared btwn the 2 OS’s. Of course if your against that you can use hfs or ext4 & figure out how to mount those. NTFS will of course not work w/ the permission structure of either well.

[greattsclerouse]

thanks. I've read different stuff pretty much every where I go so thought it might be worthwhile to ask this community about their thoughts. appreciate your input.

[rbreaves]

Yea, I just started to put my VMs on a 4th partition, 200gb on a 1TB so that I can share VMs btwn 3 OS's natively, macOS, Windows or Linux. I picked NTFS for that scenario as I am more confident in ALL 3 being able to read and write to it properly - however I know there will always be a risk of data corruption when having an OS read a format that is not native to it. I still want the pro of being able to write large files though, so I've made the trade off.

One thing that I have also done is ensured that my actual Windows partition will never be mounted in write mode from any other OS by changing some settings. The VM partition is read-write obviously.

Windows for now is my primary OS but that may switch to Linux. In any event if the 200gb isn't enough space then I will likely just shuffle things around under Windows so that the VMs I am currently working with will be available to all 3. All in all I like this solution best, I dedicate the most space to my primary and I dedicate just enough to the rest while have the shared space as well. I feel confident this will not result in having to reload an entire OS, which is something I want to actively avoid and is a risk with dual or triple boot systems.