Hello all, Longer version of the question : –
Why does the Debian Graphical installer compromise any other Linux install on the same HDD/SSD by reformatting swap. I doubt that it affects Windows since it does not use swap (I do not have any Windows installed so cannot test). I used debian-10.2.0-amd64-netinst.iso to add an installation to the same HDD as my main Mint/Mate installation. I used the Graphical Installer (which is recommended for new users) and when it came to partitions, requested that Debian installed in to the largest free space. Everything seemed to go well and after a lot of processing I was running a Debian/Mate system. However, when using the grub menu to access my main Mint/Mate system I noted that the boot process was not normal. After some investigation,I found the the UUID of the swap partition had been changed and therefore initramfs.../resume and fstab were now pointing to a non-existent swap partition. Also, once it start to run, the system had no active swap. The reason is that no matter what options you try to select in the partitioning dialogue, the installer will always reformat swap and therefore swap gets a new UUID. Yes I can fix that but I don’t want to and why format an already healthy swap partition anyway. As I pointed out above, I have been using Mint/Mate and occasionally SparkyLinux (approx 12 years without Windows) and always put a new release or trial system into a new partition on my system disk, set it up, check it out and secure it. During this process I would continue to maintain my existing healthy system for day to day use – at no time does swap or any other partition get reformatted unless I want it to. And then when ready, change my main system to the new system. I tried again with an empty drive adding two debian installs using default settings in both cases. The first set up efi boot correctly as well as swap and its own partition. The second added it’s own partition but compromised the first installation by reformatting swap. One of the other install options does appear to provide a way out of formatting swap but that installer is quite technical and not something to be used as a trial system. Is the reformat normal for Debian or is it being instigated because of a response from my old hardware (2010) to the hardware identification process carried out during the install? It does not happen in Mint, Sparky or Manjaro all of which I have trialled in the last month.
