[SOLVED] Dual-boot or multi-boot of Linux Lite (and others) with Windows 7

[gold_finger]

Before I started, I just thought well, I'll take another sneak peek into the LL grub file to see if I can see and interpret the menu entries that are in there.

And sure enough, as I think you had correctly guessed or presumed, LL's Grub file does indeed list in its menu entries not only LL and Win7, but also Linux Mint.  So when I installed LL, I guess it automatically spotted and included the Mint installation that was already there?

Yes -- when you installed, it looked for and listed any other OS's on the computer and added them to grub menu.  If you had installed Mint second, Mint would have done the same thing.  When you install PCLOS, it will do that too and it's grub will list Windows, Mint and LL.

I did not uninstall Mint's grub (as your advice suggested).  Being naturally cautious, I hate removing/deleting /uninstalling in case I can't later recover or reinstate things!  I just went into Win7 and removed the "Mint" entry from the EasyBCD menu, leaving just Win7 and Linux Lite as listed options (it is quite clear that removing the Mint entry from EasyBCD's menu does not delete the OS itself).  Then in the EasyBCD menu I selected Linux Lite to boot into.  I wanted to see if EasyBCD would know - or would now go and look for - Linux Lite's grub.

As usual, first up came the Windows bootloader screen (now showing only Win7 and LL).  I selected LL.  What came up?  Yes, Mint's Grub screen again (still showing no LL). 

What does that prove?

I don't "know" for sure what EasyBCD is doing, but from prior discussion I suspected that once it set itself to use one, it would point to that one for any others it finds and lists later.  That was my reasoning for suggesting to delete Mints grub.  That way it wouldn't be able to find it anymore when told to refresh the menu and would be forced to find only LL's grub, causing it to then use that.  So, your experiment with just deleting the Mint entry (without actually deleting Mint's grub) seems to confirm my suspicion.

If you end up deciding to try my method, clear Mint and LL entries from EasyBCD, then have it look for OS's and make brand new entries.  My guess is that it will only list Windows and LL, but when you select LL it's grub menu will then show entry for Mint.  If PCLOS uses legacy grub, then it sounds like you'll be able to add that directly to EasyBCD.  You can also add it to LL's grub if you want to by booting into LL and running "sudo update-grub" after you've installed it.

However, like I said before, I do think austin.texas's solution will be simpler.

As I understand that issue, put simply, LL works well as "lead" grub and sees and boots other distros;  but the grubs of other distros (like Mint) don't always see or work well with LL.

It's not that other distros fail to "see or work well with LL".  One or two standard lines in grub code that all distros look to and use to boot others they find was altered/customized in LL -- so they don't work as expected anymore when pointed to by other distros -- causing failure to boot LL.  The change(s) to LL were made to make things easier for new Linux users who dual-boot with Windows.  I don't dual-boot with Windows, so I don't really know what about the menu is "easier" than what one would see without the change(s).

When I first started using Linux and did dual-boot with Windows, I honestly didn't think there was anything particularly confusing or difficult about the grub menu I was seeing -- so not sure if such modifications are really necessary.

If I do go forward with the manual-insertion of LL into Mint's boot menu (the austin.texas route) having now looked into the actual "texts" in the grub files of both distros, I will need to get absolute clarity on where to paste-in the additional menu entry.  But I will put that into a separate post.

His post here pretty much spells it out.

• Boot into Mint and open a terminal
  
• Enter "gksu gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom" (without the quotes) to open the 40_custom file as root.  This is what you'll see:
  

Code:

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.

• Now open Mint's file manager and open the LL root partition
  
• Navigate to LL's  /boot/grub/grub.cfg file and open it.
  
• Find first menu entry and copy it in its entirety (including the last "}" as shown in his post)
  
• Paste that into your opened 40_custom file right under the last comment line.
  
• If can't paste, start again but right-click LL root partition and choose "Open as root/administrator"; then copy/paste the menu entry again.
  
• Save file and run "sudo update-grub" in Mint terminal.
  
• Next reboot should then have a working LL entry in Mint's grub.