Adam Bogacki was once rumoured to have said: > Hi, I was wondering if anyone has experienced boot compatibility issues > with Potato and XP in a multi-drive, multi-boot system. > > I have XP on a 20G drive and am about to install Potato on another 40G > drive but "Debian Unleashed" (1999, p.989) states: > > "Using Windows NT and Linux > > If you want to use Linux and NT on the same system, be prepared for a > bit of trouble; NT does not like to coexist with other operating > systems. Read the Linux+NT Mini-HOWTO (available from the LDP at > http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/), and follow the directions ... Using NT and > Linux on the same system is not recommended, if you can reasonably avoid > it, but should work if you are > careful."
This is alarmist bollocks, as usual. The reality is the majority of people have no idea how to partition and set up a multi-boot environment. I have a Dual boot testing/XP system at home. both my boot partitions are on the first disk. I have grub installed in the boot sector of my linux root partition, and use the standard XP/NT MBR, and have the active flag set to boot my debian partition first. This is how you make it work painlessly, and how you prevent windows from making your life hell when it installs or upgrades, because its trivial to change which partition has the active flag in MS OSen, and MS OSen won't touch partitions which are non-dos because if it did, MS would have hell to pay in court because it would be impossible to defend the act as being a natural part of the upgrade or installation process. Stuffing about with physically isolated disks just makes your life harder. Don't do it if you can avoid it. linux-fdisk won't swallow your data unless you tell it to. And besides, partition tables exist so you don't need to stuff about with multiple drives to have multiple operating systems. I've been running dual boot systems off of a single drive since I started with cramming slackware onto my parent's 210MB disk alongside Win3.11 and DOS in '95 - it worked then, and it still works now. C. -- --==============================================-- Crossfire | This email was brought to you [EMAIL PROTECTED] | on 100% Recycled Electrons --==============================================-- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
