dual booting linux

[Guest richard_haggath]

is it possible to have two linux installs on one disk?

for example partition 1 red hat

and partition 2 suse

and even partition 3 mandrake

 

all are the latest release versions (not rc or beta's)

[mtweidmann]

Theres no reason you can't have more than one OS (Linux or otherwise) on a computer. In fact, hard drive space allowing, you can have as many as you want. Linux unlike some versions of Windows isn't fussy about where you put it. You might have fun setting up Lilo but theres probably documentation floating around telling you how to do it.

 

You might have problems sharing data between the distros, depending on how you setup the partitions. You might want to have a dedicated data partition for moving things round.

 

The other, possibly simpler, solution is VMWARE. Have one OS installed as your base system, then us vm to install the others for playing around with.

 

 

Practical note:

Linux installs generally don't have just one partition. You could get away with just one, but it would be more normal to have 3. The root partition, a swap partition, and oe for user accounts. So you'd have to reckon fro three per Linux install. There is a limit to the number of entires a partition table can hold, so you might be better off with say two small HDs rather than 1 big one. As that gives you 2 tables.

[Counterspy]

Consider the following partitions: "/" root (necessary), /home (to save unformatted in future upgrades/installs to preserve the settings you choose),

/usr (where your files go) and /var (to stop it from overrunning root). Sizes are indicated in the old doc section at the top if this page under install>partitions.

 

Counterspy