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That's going to be specific to each distro whether it's possible or not. It's usually hidden in advanced partitioning, if available at all. It's like every new distro has to be completely turnkey to appeal to gamers.
I don't get why GRUB is so popular, GRUB 2 is so incredibly bloated and convoluted when it really doesn't need to be, and it's not even nice like rEFInd and other graphical bootloaders. When they started shipping GRUB 2 by default I switched to syslinux, then systemd-boot/efistub.
Same. GRUB might offer wider compatibility and support legacy BIOS, but it's a cantankerous, wheezy dinosaur compared to systemd-boot. I don't know why more distros don't at least offer the latter as an option during installation.
GRUB 2 is so incredibly bloated and convoluted when it really doesn't need to be
Heh. Because back when LILO was the standard bootloader people wanted something modern that could boot off everything and could support new tech indefinitely. And then it kind of got out of hand. Ironically, Grub still can't boot into a generic ISO without loading all of it in RAM.
Grub is the systemd of bootloaders... it's large and complex and can do anything but occasionally someone will say "I don't need it to do everything, how about something smaller that only does this and this".
Easy, replace it with systemd-boot: https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_465
systemd-boot is simpler to configure and keep up to date. On my PC I only needed to create 5 lines of config for my Linux drive, and it automatically configures the boot option for my Windows drive.
This is the right answer.
Fedora (workstation): search 'inst.sdboot' to install without grub (leaving systemd-boot).
I tried to use rEFInd years ago on my first UEFI machine, gave up and ended with GRUB... maybe it was just a crap setup and I need to try again...
But, how about backing up just the boot sectors / EFI partition with a dd command and then just restoring it again? Not a slick solution, I agree
TBH, if a distro doesn't give me options during install then I'd probably stop there as every update to GRUB could be automatically installed and blat your machine again.
But, how about backing up just the boot sectors / EFI partition with a
ddcommand and then just restoring it again? Not a slick solution, I agree
Unfortunately that does nothing on a UEFI system. There's no boot record any more (just a partition table) and even if there were (ie it's an MBR drive instead of GPT) it would be ignored under UEFI.
But in the case of rEFInd and GRUB, both would actually happily live side by side, what's changing is just the default bootloader selection in the UEFI. So all you need to go into your UEFI settings and point it back to your choice of bootloader. No need to worry about reinstalling the bootloader, messing with config files, etc.
Pop Os uses SystemD and not GRUB
Debian installer in expert mode definitely asks you whether, and howz you want to install grub.
Is there some trick that can request grub not to install?
That really depends on your distro's installer, so there's no simple answer to your question. If you're using Arch for instance, you have complete control over that process. For other distros, you'll need to do your homework.
In saying that, one option could be to do a manual partition restore - like install your distro inside a VM (but don't reboot after the install, just shutdown the VM), and then clone the partition from the VHD to your real drive. After that you can just create an entry in rEFInd. But that's more effort than simply just changing the default bootloader.
I use arch btw. So you choose what boot loader to install and if you even want one. I've stopped using grub for decades because it has always been such a mess. Used refind for some time. Nowadays I just use systemd-boot.
Archinstall let me choose systemd-boot and i like it a lot better than Grub2
--- Thank you to everyone for replying. I'm pretty satisfied now that there is no trick to prevent grub installing unless an option is given during installation. Maybe in future, more distros will have the option 🤷♂️
Another option is to avoid the installer entirely and install from a live environment using chroot and whatever your distro’s installation bootstrap tool is. I started using this method to install Debian on ZFS root using this method for a while and it’s become my go-to method for installing most distros as it gives you the most control over the resulting OS. It will also often take some distro-specific knowledge but is also a valuable learning opportunity.
I was trying to avoid making it more complicated, but I might actually look into this anyway. It seems it might be a more tidy way to install them all together. Thanks 👍