Is installing Manjaro like this a good idea?

I have an old computer, I’m running Linux Mint 19.3 32-bit right now. I want to install Manjaro to escape the hell of finding i386 alternatives to apps on Linux. I have ran it on my USB drive. Unfortunately, I could only take a photo of the screen because the USB has overheated and froze. Is installing Manjaro like this a good idea? I was going to install the latest XFCE 64-bit version of Manjaro. Thanks for help.

I can’t upload the image here so I’m going to type the summary of the installation method out.

Create new MSDOS partition table on /dev/sda (ST9320320AS).
Create new 305241MiB partition on /dev/sda (ST9320320AS) with file system ext4.
Flag 305241MiB ext4 partition as boot.
Install Manjaro on new ext4 system partition.
Install boot loader on /dev/sda.

Note : I have tried to install it alongside Mint but it threw up an error.

So it is 64bit capable ?

Yes, it has an AMD processor that is 64-bit.

That all looks okay to me, provided that the machine boots in legacy BIOS or compatibility (CSM) mode. :wink:

However, since we don’t know how much RAM the machine has, perhaps it would be wise to create a swap partition. :thinking:

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Does it make any difference if it boots with an American Megatrends boot screen?

The machine has 4GB of RAM.

Um, not really. You have to go into the firmware settings and see whether it boots in CSM mode. If there are no such options at all, then it might be a traditional real mode BIOS, in which case you’ll be okay.

Thanks for the help, I’ll probably ask one of the PC technicians in my area if they can give me an opinion on it too :slight_smile:

It most likely is a traditional BIOS, given that you’ve run a 32-bit Mint on it. But it never hurts to check.

And with 4 GiB of RAM, I’d definitely recommend a swap partition of about 8 GiB. :wink:

How can you make a swap partition?

You have a choice at the start of the install process.

Thanks, It’s pretty late right now, so I’ll probably install it tommorow when I have more energy. :smile:

You could also look inside your BIOS settings and see if there are any options titled “launch efi shell” or something among the lines of that. If such an option exists it’s most probably UEFI.

Seeing as you have mint you could try and look for a “sys/firmware/efi” folder. If it’s there, your Mint installation is in UEFI. If not, it’s BIOS. Or install efibootmgr on Mint and then run it - if it outputs anything, then you have UEFI. If it says “not supported”, it’s BIOS.

Also - when installing, if you manage your partitions manually during install, just make a 8gb partition with the file system “linuxswap”. That should do the trick for swap space.

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I strongly recommend a separate /home partition. If worst comes to worst and a reinstall is necessary, it makes reinstallation a lot simpler and faster.

Update : I successfully installed Manjaro. No more help is needed :smiley:

Actually, the swap partition doesn’t have a filesystem on it. The kernel accesses the raw drive blocks directly. :slight_smile:

The designation linux swap is only an identifier of the partition type in the partition table, but it isn’t even representative of what is or isn’t on the partition. It’s only a numerical value that partition managers interpret as being a Linux swap partition or a Solaris data partition. :slight_smile:


Could you then please mark the post that most adequately answered your questions as the solution? It will add said post to your opening post for future reference. :wink:

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Well thank you for letting me know! =) My original intent was to say “choose linuxswap in the “file system” dropdown menu in the installer” - while I guess it’s erroneously called “file system” in the installer, that’s how the dropdown menu is titled so I went along with it. Although I actually did not know about the inner workings of linux swap, so I appreciate the explanation.

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