Considering clearlinux, a few questions

General Discussion
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I’d like to try clearlinux (I’ve given it a go on a live USB), so I thought I’d ask before I attempt to install.

  1. Is there a way to enable fractional display scaling? I tried the known ways for mutter and Wayland on the live boot, but that didn’t enable scaling the display settings GUI.

  2. Would running the following command from live USB load clearlinux on a partition without installing systemd-boot loader (understanding that the “/” partition will have to be mounted)?
    swupd os-install /mnt --bundles=os-core,os-core-update,kernel-native --statedir=/mnt/var/lib/swupd
    I would like to then run update-grub, and at least be able to try clearlinux and decide if it’s worth it to change bootloaders or manage 2 boot loaders.

FYI, here’s another vote for the default installer GUI to allow install of the OS without loading the boot loader.

Thanks!

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Hi there, welcome!

This thread has some information about fractional scaling and reports of it working on a Clear Linux installation with Wayland: Does Clear Linux support fractional scaling? How do I turn it on? .

The command to install swupd directly to a path will work. update-grub won’t work without a manual entry because it assumes different paths in /boot. You’ll want to manually add an entry to GRUB for Clear Linux and maintain it with updates, or have GRUB chainboot systemd-boot, or have both bootloaders installed seperately and use your system EFI boot menu to flip between them.

1 Like
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Thanks for the informed response. Looks promising.

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Here’s where I’m at:

  • Successfully loaded the OS onto a partition (with swupd os-install)
  • Modified grub to see the partition/OS (added it to /etc/grub.d/40_custom).
  • Copied the kernel from /usr/lib/kernel to /boot.
  • Ran “sudo update-grub”, and I can see clearlinux in my grub menu.

But when I select clearlinux in the grub menu and boot, it hangs after a few seconds, at “Kernel Offset: 0x40000000…”
I assume I’m missing something in my 40_custom grub file specifically needed for clearlinux.
Any help?

Just as a reminder, I’d really like to try clearlinux for a few days using only grub. Then I can decide if it’s worth managing the bootload stuff that seems to be needed for multiboot.

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Unfortunately, this become hard to debug without being able to see the layout of your partitions, contents of boot partition, grub.conf etc. I’m guessing there is something missing from the menu entry.

If you’re targeting installation for the free space at the end of the disk, the easiest way would be to let the Clear Linux installer do the “Safe Installation” method which will take the unallocated disk space and install its normal partitions, including its own boot partition. Then you can use your EFI to pick between the OSs or configure GRUB to chainboot systemd-boot. This will keep each OS managing their own boot partitions without mixing files. If you decide you don’t want Clear Linux, you can simply delete the partitions it creates.

If you have a setup where you really want GRUB to directly boot Clear Linux, we haven’t done much testing but we’re curious too. @bktan has setup a test environment to see what it takes.