I have got a new (refurbished) T480 with a 1TB NVME Samsung drive. I have installed in the WWAN slot a 512GB NVME WD drive.
On the Samsung drive is Windows 11 pre-installed. On the WD drive, I have tried multiple times installing (i) Kubuntu, then (ii) Manjaro, with partitions for home and swap. With the warnings coming up during installation, I now have a 640MB FAT32 partition, where I would target /boot/efi .
I can install Kubuntu first, that works. I then install Manjaro KDE, that works. At that point, Kubuntu stops working, I think because I’m overwriting the /boot/efi .
I have now tried (i) installing Kubuntu, (ii) installing Refind, and (iii) installing Manjaro without specifying the /boot/efi. Manjaro won’t boot.
I then tried (i) installing Kubuntu, (ii) installing Manjaro, (iii) installing Refind. Manjaro works, but Kubuntu doesn’t. Strangely enough, it slowly finds its way to the login screen, but entering password leads to a black screen that hangs.
On my X230T, I have a similar configuration with Windows on the main 2TB drive, and Manjaro and Kubuntu on the WWAN drive. This was done 10 years ago, and recently refreshed with the Windows drive upgraded.
I’m now thinking of reverting back from GPT to MBR, and working around efi, if I can. I thought that Refind might resolve the issue, but my guess is that it finds /boot/efi for Manjaro, but not having a /boot/efi for Kubuntu is causing an issue.
I’ve also been reading about the possitibility of having TWO efi partitions (i.e. one for Manjaro, and one for Kubuntu, but I don’t know if that will or won’t resolve things. I’ve already done re-installations at least 8 times, so I’m willing to experiment … but I’m getting tired of this!
Does anyone have similar experiences with multi-boot on Manjaro and Ubuntu under GPT and efi, without having to worry about Windows?