On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 2:06 PM, r hayman <rhayman at pureice.com> wrote: > Grub, Grub2, or your UEFI BIOS (if you have one) can all provide a menu for > what to boot. Maybe I'm looking in totally the wrong place. I do have UEFI bios and grub2. If I could ever understand man pages I might be able to do something with UEFI but - -- alas its cuneiform to me. > > I hear your pain. I am currently running Debian-based Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS on > a Dell XPS 15 9650 4K LCD with a Dell TB16 dock - all is fully functional > except dimming the external 34" or 40" 4K dock attached monitor. It took me > a bit to get this all working and Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS replaced Unity with > Gnome 3 which also removed franctional scaling of the display(s) - only > providing for 100% or 200%, and I currently run at 150% or 162%. Gnome 3 > also screws up my virtual workspace preferences and talk on the forums is > that this hardware combination is borked on 18.04.1, so I'm right there with > you. Don't you love upgrades that reduce functionality? > > I will make a dd replica of my 16.04.5 SDD onto one or more external SDDs > and play with upgrading them in place. Grub2 should automatically add the > new external SDD to the boot menu. > > On my Ubuntu desktop workstation, I have space and some open SATA ports that > I can simply plug a fresh SDD into and do a fresh install. I would let Grub2 > update the MBR of the existing bootable partition. > > I have had little to no issues with Grub or Grub2, so I continue to use that > for my boot menu and boot options. > > It sounds like you have split a single HDD/SDD into multiple partitions for > your different OS versions. Do you have the ability to have separate disks > for each OS version? That shouldn't be needed, but one never knows. I always > use separate disks when I do these things. I would use separate disks if that were an option but there is room for only one drive in the chassis. I bought this sy stem cheap because I need someplace to test software BEFORE I install on my primary systems this way I won't be destroying my main systems with new software rather just a testing system and if things work - - -well then they get moved to their permanent homes and if they don't - - - HOSED! (and without my main systems getting polluted!) Sorry - - its a good idea but not possible this time. Thanks for the ideas! Dee