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How do you multiboot?


bvc
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How do you multiboot?  

42 members have voted

  1. 1. How do you multiboot?

    • boot floppy
      0
    • lilo
      31
    • grub
      7
    • other
      4


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please only vote if you have Lin and Win OS's

 

I've always been curious. Now, I gotta know :D

 

I've spent the last four days attempting to fix and not loose

win98

win2k

ML-10-beta2

and my share/bkup partition

 

I finally gave in. You can slap me if you want to but I used Partition Magic7's BootMagic for my first 8 or so months of my mandrake linux life w/o any trouble at all. I just bought PM8 and am reverting to it again. Grub/reiserfs/diskdrake have been great, in and of themselves, but they do not play well w/ win. I bought a new 120gb hd in hopes of having less problems and it just cause a complete colapse. I started over completely. Well, except for the real important stuff was backed up on a network win2k pc ;) :deal:

 

So what's your thoughts?

Edited by bvc
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Why change?

I'm just to the point that hey!, if I'm gonna have to reinstall in the near future anyway I might as well give PM/BTMagic another shot at it. It's all or nothing, you see? Either linux does it all, which it can't (or rather won't) or win does it all which in my past experience, can. *cough* :D

Edited by bvc
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I use XOSL. You may want to add it to the poll. The xosl.org site is no longer around, but it's still available at the Ranish Partition Manager site. It's a little tricky to get your head around at first, but I like it a lot. It has to use LILO/GRUB to boot Linux though, so not much reason for Linux users to change. I like having a boot loader that's independent of any OS.

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I multiboot different kernel versions and a couple of distro's and I wouldn't have a clue how to do this in PM etc. (No winBlows at all)

Perhaps I could but it ain't broke kinda arguament + Don't you have to set boot magic up under windows or have they got a native linux version now.

 

More interestingly, is anyone using usermode linux...???

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I use XOSL. You may want to add it to the poll.

It's there....."other"

 

Don't you have to set boot magic up under windows or have they got a native linux version now.
BTMagic needs win/fat. There's something in the manual about ntfs but since I don't use ntfs I didn't read it.

 

[EDIT] not to mention -->Symantec? linux? yeah right! Symantec wouldn't even let me upgrade my PM7 to 8 since I don't have any registered 'Symantec' products. Jerks.

Edited by bvc
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When playing around with Linux distributions (even the non-Linux FreeBSD!) before settling on Mandrake and Librabet, I had to change the boot-loader configuration a lot. This means only one thing: GRUB. LILO's syntax (to me at least) is a lot more confusing, and it doesn't have its own builtin command line or the ability to change configurations before booting. And to boot, you have to rerun /sbin/lilo anytime anything changes. Hence, GRUB.

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LILO's syntax (to me at least) is a lot more confusing, and it doesn't have its own builtin command line or the ability to change configurations before booting.

actually it does....sorta. Say you're boot/kernel parameter for an os named linux has devfs=mount acpi=on hdd=ide-scsi

in lilo.conf. At the lilo screen, press Esc>and type

linux acpi=off

and lilo will pass to the kernel

devfs=mount acpi=off hdd=ide-scsi

 

It's not nears as nice and convenient as grub though, and yes, the best part of grub over lilo is not having to run anything for the changes to take effect. Just edit from any distro and you're done. I also agree that it's much easier to understand once you learn how it numbers partitions.

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I have used lilo successfully since I started linux, at Mandrake 7.0 I have always had a windex on my machine, with 2-3 lnux flavors. (OK, I like to play!) The trick with lilo is to know what your system will look like when you are done, and prep the file ahead of time. I also keep a back up of lilo.conf in my /home directory. Actually, preping lilo.conf and fstab are the two secrets to happy multi-booting.

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In case anyone is curious.....bootmagic doesn't actually boot linux's. It chainloads (hands off to a linux bootloader). You install the linux bootloader to the /root partition of the distro. BTMagic can then see it and be told to boot to it. People say it adds a complicating process to booting, but if it works, I do not care. Not that grub doesn't work.....I know it does. Lilo? Huh, no comment. [EDIT] k, just one or two....I've seen li one too many times to be convinced it works flawlessly for years. Google and forums proves that it doen't. :D

Edited by bvc
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LILO's syntax (to me at least) is a lot more confusing, and it doesn't have its own builtin command line or the ability to change configurations before booting.

actually it does....sorta. Say you're boot/kernel parameter for an os named linux has devfs=mount acpi=on hdd=ide-scsi

in lilo.conf. At the lilo screen, press Esc>and type

linux acpi=off

and lilo will pass to the kernel

devfs=mount acpi=off hdd=ide-scsi

 

It's not nears as nice and convenient as grub though, and yes, the best part of grub over lilo is not having to run anything for the changes to take effect. Just edit from any distro and you're done. I also agree that it's much easier to understand once you learn how it numbers partitions.

Very interesting indeed; you learn something new about open-source software everyday. :) As you say, though, GRUB still rocks in comparison. :headbang:

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