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on my hard drive, I have Archlinux with fully customized GRUB. I want to install Xubuntu 14.04 on other partition. How to disable GRUB installation during Xubuntu installation process?

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I think you can install Xubuntu with a Live CD/DVD, and choose to place bootloader on your Xubuntu partition and not where your grub is so grub stays as it is. After you finish installing Xubuntu, you can boot into Archlinux and play with update-grub or better use another Live CD or some USB pendrive with Boot Repair on it to fix your dual-boot configuration. Boot Repair can be written on USB with Unetbootin tool. But you need to make sure you can boot into Archlinux after first reboot when finished with installing Xubuntu.

Oh, also make sure you download the right iso image for Boot Repair, they have iso images for both 32bit and 64bit machines.

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  • That is only with Something Else or manual install. The partitioning screen has a combo box below it on where to install the grub boot loader. Grub does not like installing to a partition, but in this case installing to partition, in effect is just to be a throw away, as you will not be using it. You still have to update grub in Xubuntu so the grub in Arch finds the newer kernels on updates. Or you can manually configure to boot the partition or just the links to the most current kernel in root. – oldfred Mar 12 '14 at 23:34
  • Yes, 'Something Else', the 3rd choice for installing Xubuntu is the right one. I don't know much about Grub or Linux in general but I think 'throwing away' bootloader for Xubuntu as an intermediary step can prevent some major boot issues after first reboot when finishing installing Ubuntu/Xubuntu. Boot Repair CD helped me fix certain boot issues worse than this one. The 'Recommended repair' button saved me more than once but only after fixing boot problems for the original operating system I had running prior to installing Ubuntu/Xubuntu. – Taz D. Mar 12 '14 at 23:51
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Run ubiquity -b or ubiquity --no-bootloader to skip the grub installation step. See ubiquity --help for more details.

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My solution is:

Install Xubuntu with GRUB on sda.

Boot Archlinux from Xubuntu's GRUB.

Run

# grub-install --recheck --target=i386-pc /devsda
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

After that, I have Archlinux's GRUB.

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    The only disadvantage is that grub remembers where to reinstall on major updates. So a major update to Xubuntu will overwrite Arch's grub. Easy to fix just by booting into Arch and reinstalling its grub. But you can edit how grub remembers with: sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc #Enter thru first pages,spacebar to choose/unchoose drive, enter to accept, unchoose everything. – oldfred Mar 13 '14 at 16:24
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Wanted to do the same, I decided to add this answer with captures.

  • Open a terminal

  • tape the following command:

    ubiquity -b

enter image description here

This will open the ubuntu installer program after a few seconds.

Don't close the terminal though.

enter image description here

Now assuming you selected the Something Else option (see below image)

enter image description here

Now, you won't have the option to chose where to install GRUB. Like in this following image.

enter image description here

Instead, that options is removed Like in this next image. So GRUB won't be installed.

enter image description here

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