Dual booting

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Ive got a few different linux distros that i wanna try. Wanna setup with dual boot to XP. Question is if ive got something like fedora/xp on my system for a few weeks then i wanna give ubuntu/xp a go, then how do i go about uninstalling fedora to replace it with ubuntu? Cheers

Mick

 

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If you install GRUB to the Master Boot Record as part of Fedora (or LILO if it uses that) then booting with the XP CD and doing FIXMBR should get to ready to install the next distro.

It is a possibility that you will have to use the 'fdisk-like' part of the XP install disk to make the XP partition active again.

Harry.

 

Is GRUB the program that lets ya select what OS ya wanna load, if so whats it mean? Im new to all this lol

Mick

 

GRUB is GRand Unified Bootloader. And LILO is LInux LOader.

Both are systems for loading multiple OSes, and one of them is usualy installed by default. It *is* possible to mess with XP's loader system to make it multiboot - but that is harder work!

Harry.

 

Cheers for that, in theory how many OSs could ya have booting? Would it be possible just to install multiple linux systems with XP or would i end up with problems then?

Mick

 

I have SuSe, Debian's AMD64 release and a 32 bit Debian install, as well as XP home (that's what it came with) installed on my laptop. I plan on adding another distro or two. You just have to create enough partitions to cover the number of installs you want to do.

 

Just hit me first problem with ubuntu. Im trying to do a dual boot on my desktop. Ive installed it but it still boots straight to xp. Ive got 3 SATA drives, would i be right in thinking that i need to install on my primary SATA as i havent done that, or is it something else. Cheers

Mick

 

GRUB (which I assume is the installer here) should go on the first disk.

Harry.

 

cheers man il sort that tomorrow going out on the lash now.

Mick

 

You might want to go to the Ubuntu forums and ask there about this problem. I did some Googling on Ubuntu + sata and found that Ubuntu has had some problems with different implementations of sata drives. Posting there with your specific hardware specs and your specific problem will most likely be the fastest way to find a resolution.

 

I've got an older PC that I bought for a relatively cheap price that I install distros on...blow them away, and install different distros. I also have VMware Workstation 5.5 on my lab machine, but having a hardware platform for testing Linux distros forces me to deal with hardware issues and learn more.

 

Does anyone know how i can install multiple distros, without writing over GRUB. Cheers

Mick

 

Just tell the new distro not to install GRUB and edit the menu file would be how I would approach this.

Harry.

 

raffaz,

I actually let each distro install grub. So far none of the distro's have over-written the grub menu completely. They will put themselves at the head of the list, but I've never lost the ability to boot to any of the installed distro's. Grub recognizes other Linux installs just like it does Windows installs and leaves them intact.

 

That's neat. GRUB is fairly new to me - I'm more used to LILO

Harry.

 

I find that grub is better than Lilo, but thats just my opinion. The reason I say this is because you only have to edit a grub.conf file to update what OS's you have running and with lilo you have to edit and run lilo again (which in my case, broke my installations )

Grub will work for BSD's and Unix's too, I have loads of OS's running with grub selecting them (Even tho it would have probably been better for me to use VMWARE).

 

I like GRUB much better than LILO. Until I installed GRUB updating the kernel image was always an adventure. It seemed like there was always some kind of problem using LILO that often led to a kernel panic on booting into the new image, where even if there is a problem with GRUB all I have to do is update GRUB is run update-grub. It's just much easier working with GRUB than working with LILO, at least imo.