I just tried installing Ubuntu Budgie spin on a USB and it seemingly deleted/replaced my Linux Mint bootloader from an internal drive so I could no longer boot Mint without plugging in the Ubuntu USB. When I tried to boot from the Mint drive I just got a blank Grub prompt instead of a list of kernels.
Thankfully I was able to reverse this using Timeshift.
How do you avoid this? I didn’t see any relevant options in the Live USB install process. And I have had similar problems like this before.
The behavior I want is to have two standalone Linux bootloaders on separate drives. I suppose I could just disconnect all system drives during install so that the Ubuntu install process can’t fuck with it…
I understand now. You’re following the wrong approach for installing on a USB. Installing to USB is done purely by burning an ISO to it. If you run a standard traditional installer, it will think the USB is just another disk on your computer, and will hence modify the host computer’s bootloader accordingly.
There may be a way to do what you’re trying to do without burning a ISO, but I’m not sure. But the way you’re doing it is definitely not right.
But that’s a live environment that doesn’t save anything you install, right? That’s not what I want.
You can use Live USBs with persistence