[SLUG] multiple booting

[john at johnallsopp.co.uk]

> Hi
>
> john at johnallsopp.co.uk wrote:
>
>>What do you think my chances of getting Windows XP to boot with Red
>>Hat 7 and the latest from Debian, Fedora, with Agnula too?
>
> I just installed Slackware 10.2 to dual boot with ME.  It works fine,
> and I've
> been dual booting for 3 years now.
>
> Slackware say Grub is dodgey, and use LILO.  I did lose the ability to
> boot a
> partition once using Grub, but that was probably me.
>
> If you install to a machine that already has Windows, you can resize
> the
> Windows partition (after defragmenting) with GNU Parted or Presizer.
> You can
> fit the program for Parted (best) onto 2 floppies.
>
> This time I created 4 partitions for Slackware:
>
> SWAP - 800M  (Rule of Thumb SWAP + RAM should be about 1G).  Of course
> the
> same swap is used by all Linux partitions.

Whoa! Hang on. That wasn't obvious, but I guess it is if I think about
it. Maybe I thought swap might contain stuff from closedown to bootup,
but swap is for purely live information, right. Cool, got it.

> /  - 4G  This is where Slackware 10.2 goes.  The idea is that when
> 10.3, or
> whatever appears this the bit that changes.
>
> /usr/local -3G  This is where you put other installs, not in
> Slackware, eg
> OpenOffice 2 when it comes, and it survives an update.

Interesting. But wouldn't 10.3 include the latest software? So what ..
does it a) not install OO because you've requested it doesn't, or b)
it does, but it puts it in the Slackware partition (or somewhere else)
and you carry on using the one you're used to, or c) it's clever and
doesn't overwrite your version of OO

> /home  -3G.  There is a really good reason why I need 3G for private
> files, but I have forgotten it.

It'll be to improve your memory capacity :-)

> I've tried, but never achieved 3 or more systems at once.  The secret
> is
> probably in learning LILO or Grub properly.

Cheers, thanks for your advice.

Well, we've covered the partitions thing and LILO/GRUB in the LPI
programme so I should know it. Some of your points highlight some new
realisations tho. I've just never applied it, so fingers crossed.

J