have been running a dual boot system for quite some time now with windows 2K/XP. i’ve also been toying with linux at my part time job. well the other night my 2k installation got hosed, and i found out the xp installation was on a larger drive than i previously thought due to a mistake in jumper settings. on finding this space i came to the conclusion i needed to re-format the drive as a 120gb instead of a 32, and install even more operating systems… so i’m thinking linux (probably CENTos), win98/dos, 2000, and xp.
How would i go about doing this. the only thing i’m lost on is the linux install at the moment as multi booting MS operating systems is no problem… just partition and layer the systems by age. but how does the linux install fit in? do i have to special edit the boot.ini or something else all together?
First, try Ubuntu and not CentOS. CentOS is a server distro, not a desktop distro, and it isn’t as easy to use as Ubuntu is in most respects, especially installing software.
Linux systems should be easier to multi-boot than Windows systems because Linux installation software is entirely graphical and walks you through the process. You do have to edit partitions (not a problem if you diagnose jumper setting bugs) but you do not have to edit any files. The Linux install will put a boot manager (used to be LILO, now it’s commonly GRUB) on the MBR and that will boot Linux directly and chain-load all of the Windows systems (so the boot manager is invisible to Windows, which thinks it was booted by its own method). The only thing to keep in mind is to install Linux last, because the Windows MBR won’t allow you to boot anything but Windows.
Linux distros have gotten really good at allowing people to configure multi-booting computers. This ought to be easy.
One final note: While modern Ubuntu versions (at least) can safely resize NTFS partitions, you probably want to defrag them before resizing just in case. This might be a belt-and-suspenders kind of thing at this point but you can never be too careful. (And Ubuntu can read and write NTFS partitions as well now. I don’t know if CentOS can.)
I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for the question, but I’m curious why you want to have four OSes. Are you running legacy applications, or do you want them for testing/self-training? I was just thinking it might be easier to have one OS on the host machine (probably XP) and virtual PCs with Linux, Win9x, and Win2k. With your 120 GB HD, you could make a boatlaod of virtual PCs without ever having to repartition.
Bayard: Are virtual PCs typically as fast as real on-the-metal installs of the OS? I’ve only played around with them for OSes I can’t reasonably install on my (too modern) hardware, such as MS-DOS 6 and Plan 9 from Bell Labs.
For what I use them for (testing business applications), I haven’t noticed a huge difference. Maybe a little slower. I don’t think I’d try to do any serious gaming with them, though. That’s why I was wondering what pope_hentai was looking to do with them. If he just wants to teach himself the OS or maybe run some old simple applications, a VM would probably be a good option. They have a couple of advantages, like the ability to easily revert back to a previous state if you goof someting up. They’re also portable if you ever get a new host PC.
Forgot one thing – they eat a lot of RAM. My work PC (Win XP host) couldn’t really deal with VMWare’s virtual PC environment till I got it up to about 2GB of RAM.
if its reasons your looking for… for linux, i’m working in a pc shop as a part time job. alll the servers run some form or another of linux. win98/dos, i used to do alot of nes rom hacking, all the tools i’m familiar with no longer work properly in newer operating systems. i just personally like windows 2000 (its what i primarily use) and most newer programs (like latest versions of adobe premiere) only work in xp.
only have 512megs of ram so virtual pc may cause some trouble… that and multi boot gets me bragging rights to the other local geeks L… so its apparently install the windows systems first, then linux, and ubuntu linux will have its own boot mgr that will overwrite the windows boot mgr? will that be as easy to modify as a boot.ini?
And why would it matter if ubuntu could resize partitions? once i set those and start installing i dont intend to change them… shouldnt i just be able to slice the drive 4 ways, one os on each partition, then connect my other physical drives?
i actually have a removable drive bay… but having ot re-insert a drive every time i reboot or want ot change os is not an attractive option. much rather use the removables for storage.
Using OS/2’s Boot Manager, I had 5 or more OSes on the same system: Dos 6, Windows 95, Windows NT 3.5, OS/2 2.x, some form of Unix, and I dabbled with Netware 3.x too. Not all on the same drive, obviously: I was a big fan of SCSI drives in those days. But that was many years ago. When Windows 2000 came out I ditched everything else.
It should be easier, at least during the install phase (which is graphical). There is a command prompt for changing things once everything has been installed, but I doubt you’ll need that.
OK, I thought you were adding Linux to an existing system which already had defined partitions. You typically have to resize in that scenario unless someone has left enough free space to install the new OS.
Here is a good source of documentation on Ubuntu. The documentation is one of the big reasons I recommend Ubuntu and use it myself. (The other reason is my absolute love of the Debian package management system but my distaste for the Debian installation system.)