[SC.LUG] Dual Boot Machines

[Dr A V Le Blanc]

On Thu, Jan 10, 1980 at 07:10:59PM -0000, Matthew Tolley wrote:
> Would it be possible to run a dual-boot with two different versions of
> Linux, or even a tri-boot machine with, say, Mandrake Linux, Lindows and Red
> Hat??

You can boot as many systems as you want, subject to the limitations
of your boot loader.  As others have written, installing a number of
independent Linux installations on the same disk usually requires
you to use a less automatic install procedure: you've got to go in
by hand and create separate partitions for each distro, and specify
the installation in such a way that they don't overwrite each other.

Grub and LILO will both cope with installations like this, but you'll
almost certainly have to write the config files for either one by
hand.

Why would you want to have several Linux distributions on the same
disk?  Well, you might want to develop programs which can run on
all major distributions.  You might want to compare the X config
files, and perhaps copy bits from one to another.  You might find
that one offers you features a second does not, and vice versa.
What I've never understood is why anyone would want Windows and
Linux on the same machine, but I don't really understand why anyone
would want Windows at all -- I haven't used it myself in over 10 years.

     -- Owen
     LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk