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I have a laptop with two HDD, Ubuntu 18.04 on one of them, no CD and only 2GB pen drive, so I can't fit 2.6GB 20.04 Ubuntu Desktop iso into it.

I want to install 20.04 Ubuntu Desktop to the second HDD alongside with existing 18.04 (I want some transition period to migrate smoothly from 18.04 to 20.04)

My idea is to make live USB for Ubuntu Server, install it and then manually install the desktop environment.

Is it easy to do?

Should I expect some important difference between "normal" Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 and Ubuntu Server 20.04 + pos-installed desktop?

Some missing software into desktop integrations? Any difficulties with drivers?

Or it's better to spend this time making some HDD bootable partition and turn it into "live HDD" and then install full desktop Ubuntu version?

Or maybe there is some easy way to "repack" Desktop Ubuntu iso and delete all the preinstalled software from it? To make it slimer and fit into 2GB..

P.S. Question title was renamed, initially it was about difference between ubuntu desktop and ubuntu server + post-installed desktop

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    Could check out minimal install option also, a fast check says it downloads the extra programs during install. If you have decent internet, might be better than server plus installing after.
    – crip659
    Apr 19, 2020 at 14:54
  • Yeah, thank you, would be great, but it's said, that UEFI is not supported by minimal iso. Also, 20.04 is not released, so I believe it simply doesn't exist yet.
    – Yuri Gor
    Apr 19, 2020 at 14:58
  • 20.04 should be released in a few days now. Don't know, but imagine installing programs on server would need to be done with CLI, till enough GUI is up and running. Having a second Ubuntu does make it easier to google what commands are needed.
    – crip659
    Apr 19, 2020 at 15:11
  • There are no huge differences between 18.04 and 20.04. Migration is expected to be rather smooth. As always it's good practice to have a backup of important files, but especially during an OS upgrade. Is it worth going through the trouble of installing separately instead of upgrading when 20.04 (or 20.04.1) is released?
    – To Do
    Apr 19, 2020 at 15:20
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    There are answers on this site to boot the ISO directly off an existing ext4 fs, by setting up a grub partition to do that.
    – ubfan1
    Apr 19, 2020 at 16:21

1 Answer 1

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While it's not exactly an answer to te question as asked in the title, thanks to ubfan1's comment I found it's the best solution for the underlying problem:

When on existing Ubuntu you have no option to prepare live cd/usb, the easiest way is to boot from iso directly using grlm-rescueboot

  • just install: sudo apt-get install grml-rescueboot

  • put bootable iso file to /boot/grlm

  • do: sudo update-grub

That's it, after reboot, you will see additional option to boot from iso.

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