How To Install Mageia 9 GNU/Linux with Dualboot, UEFI and External Drive Methods
This tutorial will help you setup Mageia 9 GNU/Linux (released 2023) on your computer or laptop with method choices including dualboot, UEFI with Windows or macOS and external disk drive. We will begin with requirements first and finish in eigth steps in under one hour. We wish you good luck. Now let's start it!
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Note that the author was a long time Mandriva user and he likes Mageia as it continues the legacy of Mandriva.
Download Mageia 9
To practice this tutorial, you should download Mageia 9 Live Edition.
Requirements
We will need requirements below for practicing this tutorial:
1 x computer or laptop
1 x USB flash drive for use as bootable medium
1 x USB flash drive for use as hard disk
1 x Mageia 9 Live Edition (see above)
1 x Unetbootin or application like that for making the bootable medium
For example, we use ThinkPad T430 as the computer, 16GB SanDisk as bootable medium, and 32GB SanDisk Flash Drive as hard disk, with UEFI and practicing dualboot with Kubuntu and Trisquel GNU/Linux (can be practiced with Windows).
This method of ours is easy and inexpensive to be mastered and once you master it, you can do it for dualboot installation into normal hard disk, solid state drive (SSD), external disk and other storage disks possible.
Preparations
Create a bootable Mageia USB flash drive (tutorial here).
Boot your computer using the bootable USB (tutorial here).
On the blue boot screen under Mageia name, press Enter to enter livecd.
Step 1
Enter livecd.
A blue Mageia desktop will show on the screen.
This livecd can do computing already like normal computing with Windows and macOS such as browse the internet and install more applications.
Step 2
Prepartitioning and begin the partitioning.
A. Format your target storage disk.
Open the start menu -> run GParted -> GParted runs -> select your target storage disk and here as example 32GB SanDisk flash drive -> click Device -> New Partition Table -> select GPT -> OK -> Apply -> your target storage will show itself as GPT under the properties.
Learn how to do disk partitioning with GParted in this tutorial.
B. Run Mageia Installer.
Double-click Install Mageia on the desktop -> Mageia Installer will show -> click Next -> target storage disk selection will show.
C. Select target storage disk.
On the top selector, select your target disk storage for example here it is our second USB flash drive SanDisk Cruzer Blade 28GB.
On the bottom, select Custom disk partitioning -> Click Next -> Disk partitiong steps will show.
Step 3
Disk partitioning and start the installation. See step (D) below for the final partitioning expected.
A. Create EFI partition
On the partitioning page, select your target storage disk i.e. for example our 32GB SanDisk Cruzer Blade and here it is sdc. Please double check and do not format your hard disk drive containing your data.
Select free space (white) under sdc -> click Create.
Create new partition dialog will show.
Change the size into about 300MB.
Set filesystem type as EFI SYSTEM PARTITION.
Set mount point as /boot/efi.
OK.
B. Create SWAP partition
Do the same but slide 1000MB as size and select SWAP as filesystem.
C. Create ROOT partition
Do the same but let the size as is and select EXT4 Journaling as filesystem and slash character ( / ) as mount point.
D. Evaluate final partitioning before proceeding
Your final partitioning should look like picture (D) above.
Read everything carefully and please make sure nothing error with it.
Click Install.
Step 4
Begin the actual installation process.
A. Partition table is being written question
Answer this question by clicking YES/OK.
B. Unused hardware support questions
Answer these questions by clicking Next.
C. Installation process is taking place
Please wait for the actual installation process and in our example this takes about less than 30 minutes. You can sip a cup of coffee and play with your kids while it is happening.
Step 5
Finishing.
A. Bootloader options
It will show options under Bootloader.
Do not change this otherwise you know what you are doing.
Click Next.
B. Package installation process
It will start some package installation process.
Wait for a minute or two for this.
Go next.
C. First boot of dualboot options
It will show options under Default.
If you choose Mageia, Mageia will boot first before Windows or any other OS.
If you choose Windows (or any other OS), it will boot first before Mageia.
We let the options unchanged and click OK.
D. Do you want to update media question
Answer this question with NO.
E. Please halt the computer, remove the live system, and restart
Answer this question by clicking Finish.
Mageia Installer will be closed.
Open the start menu.
Shutdown.
Remove the Mageia bootable USB flash drive.
Do not remove the target storage disk e.g. in our example 32GB SanDisk Cruzer Blade.
Turn your computer on.
Proceed to the next post-installation steps.
Step 6
Post-installation.
A. Network and Internet Configuration
After shutdown and power-on, you will need to do network configuration.
It will ask about what networking you will choose and answer with Ethernet.
Select Start the connection at boot and click Next.
B. Do you want to start the connection now question
Answer this question with NO and click Next.
C. Congratulations message
Click Next.
D. Set usernames and passwords
On the top part, create a pair of username and password for administrator.
On the botton part, create a pair of username and password for yourself.
Click Next.
Step 7
Login.
Enter your username and password in the login screen and click Login.
Step 8
Finish. Congratulations you have been successfully installed Mageia 9 into your computer. Happy working!
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