Ubuntu 18.04 in dual boot with Endless OS

 I bought Acer Aspire 3 Model A315-21 which came with pre-installed Endless OS. I could install Ubuntu 18.04 after resizing the Endless OS partition. But the grub of Ubuntu did not pick up the entry of Endless OS. I asked question on Ask Ubuntu and was told to add the following menu entry in /etc/grub.d/40_custom

menuentry "Endless" { insmod part_gpt insmod fat set root='hd0,gpt1' if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd0,gpt1 --hint-efi=hd0,gpt1 --hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt1 1234-abcd else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 1234-abcd fi chainloader /EFI/endless/shim.efi}

I was told to replace two instances of "1234-abcd" by UUID of /dev/sda1 which is EFI partition created by Endless OS. The above menu entry chainloads the grub installed by Endless OS.

After booting there was no chance of selecting the above menu entry since the grub menu was hidden.

I opened /etc/default/grub and changed the following lines:

GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
GRUB_TIMEOUT=0in

to:

#GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10

I could chainload the grub of Endless OS but it was not booting and I had to disable secure boot.

Interestingly the Endless OS boots with secure boot on if I choose the grub of Endless OS in BIOS

NB: Since Ubuntu 18.04 had bug of grub install I downloaded Daily/Live image of Ubuntu 18.04 in which the bug has been removed.

Installed Peppermint Linux on Lenovo Ideapad S100

I am presently at Bhopal and these people have Lenovo Ideapad S100 with Windows 7. Last time I had tried antiX Linux on USB boot on this machine.

This time I found that they had to reformat the disk and reinstall Windows 7 which was not working well.

When I boot this Laptop on Windows 7 there were auto key presses of space bar for sometime. Afterwards I could use it but space bar did not produce "space". I had to use onscreen keyboard for typing "space".

I decided to try Linux on the machine and since it has only 2 GB RAM I decided to try Peppermint Linux.

I downloaded Peppermint 9 (32 bit), checked md5sum, bought SanDisk from local market and made bootable usb disk using Rufus.

This Laptop is not friendly for USB booting. On Lenovo Laptops pressing F12 is supposed to show boot menu but the Laptop does not have F12 key and suppose to work with Fn+F11 but Fn does not work on BIOS.

I pressed F2 to enter the BIOS Set up but there is no option to bring up the USB boot option above HDD boot, however, the BIOS suggests that you could disable HDD boot option by putting "x" after selecting it and pressing x key.

After disabling HDD boot I could boot from USB. The Space Bar key did not work on Live Peppermint Desktop and I had to install "onboard" to get onscreen keyboard.

Even then I decided to install Peppermint in dual boot with Windows 7.

After install and booting Peppermint Desktop once again I had to install "onboard" and use it for space bar.

After applying all updates, however, I find that the Space Bar key is working.

Mission successful.