Live USB is the best way to try a linux Distro before install. But keeping a USB is may not be a good option always. As chronic distro hopper as I am, I tend to use a lot ditros and eventually all of the USB sticks got obsolete. Well, I wanted to test the openSUSE Tumbleweed, but I dont have a USB linux any more. My Lenovo Ideapad UEFI is tricky, when I tried a Live USB with Ubuntu 20, it got some issues with grub. I had to restore my grub using a RescueCD. I did not want to take another chance to try the openSUSE Tumbleweed. So I tried the - Booting live iso from HDD - method.

I had to google around a lot because, most of the tutorials are about Ubuntu distro, the openSUSE one required particular parameters, so after a lot of trial and error, I found a working solution, which I enlisted below.

The file we need to edit is - etc/grub.d/40_custom

add the below entry

menuentry ‘Live openSUSE’ –class suse –class gnu-linux –class gnu –class os { set isolabel=Label of the ISO file set isofile=“pathTOisoFILE” loopback loop $isofile linux (loop)/boot/x86_64/loader/linux boot=isolinux iso-scan/filename=$isofile root=live:CDLABEL=$isolabel ro rd.live.image rhgb initrd (loop)/boot/x86_64/loader/initrd }

I copied my downloaded iso file to /boot/images/openSUSE-Tumbleweed-KDE-Live-x86_64-Build139.4-Media.iso to make things simpler, and replaced the parameters in menu entry listed above.

Reboot and in the grub menu you can see the entry, simply boot it, you are in the Live Distro. You can install it or play with it as you do with a LIVE USB.

Ta