I’m currently using Ubuntu and I want try a different distro but so far the only one I’ve tried was Porteus but I had an issue where Porteus wouldn’t boot if it was installed on top of ext4 but would boot fine if it was installed on top of fat32, which is also another potential problem because Porteus requires a save file for persistence when using Windows filesystems. If there is a problem where my computer can’t boot with an ext4 filesystem, Ubuntu doesn’t have this problem because sda1/2/3 all use a different filesystem.
If I’m correct on this, would I be better off trying Porteus on ext3/2 and hoping it works or just use it with fat32 and have a separate partition formatted for ext4 to serve the same purpose as sda3 in Ubuntu and possibly store the save file (if I have the correct understanding of how save files work).
Also, I would just use NTFS but not only have I heard that it has issues with Linux, I’ve had issues using it with Linux, so I’m using fat32 for stability.
To boot Linux, the kernel and initramfs need to be loaded from disk. Most often this is done using a bootloader like GRUB, but UEFI can directly load compatible files as well. For that however, it needs to read the partition where this EFI image is stored.
FAT32 is part of the UEFI standard, so it can always be read. If you want to boot from a more complex filesystem, you first need to load a bootloader that supports it, like GRUB.
Porteus likely doesn’t have such a bootloader and is therefor limited to booting from FAT32. Similarly, at least one partition in Ubuntu is also FAT32, where the bootloader and optionally the kernel and initramfs live.
Ok, but the problem I have with that is that I don’t know what distros have a bootloader and I don’t know how to work around that with the ones that don’t. So I’m just going to stick with Ubuntu because It does and it works for what I need it to.