Dual booting

[Lunke]

I'm a totally new to linux and wanna try it though I wonder if
I could install linux on a second partion and use xp's (thats the os I use now) NTLDR to choose what os to boot?

Or does anyone has a better idea to select os to boot?

[Stuart]

Welcome to LJR Lunke. here are instructions for using XPs NTLDR to dual boot Windows and Linux.
Cheers

[Lunke]

And that works wit mandrake right?

[trickster]

It should work with any linux distribution. That is one way of doing it.

Also, most modern linux distributions will recognize if you already have Windows installed, and will prompt you to install on another partition, then create the boot menu for you.

[Schotty]

Heres how ya wanna do it :

Use fdisk and make a partition at the beginning of the disk of ~50 - 100MB. DO NOT FORMAT THIS ONE.

Then make a windows partition, and format it. I reccomend FAT32, there is very good read/write compatibility. NTFS is read only.

Install windows.

When you are ready, boot up your linux install and partition the reamaining space as you see fit, but make sure that the tiny partition is mounted at /boot. Now use the /boot for your bootloader. That will give you a nice menu to choose from (Win or Lin) at boot time.

[demian]

Lunke: Don't read this post (or at least don't let it confuse you).

I know that some distros still talk about the 1024th cylinder boundary but this is a thing of the past. lilo can handle that as of v21.4 or something which was released like a couple of years ago. Ok, maybe only one year but surely it's long enough for it to seep through to all major distros. And grub, I believe, never had that problem. So, what's the deal with the /boot partition? Why is it still recommended?

[Schotty]

I still have issues with dual booting and not having a /boot partition. Perhaps its aged hardware, maybe not. But I still need it.

[CP]

I find having a /boot partition to be fairly useful as it means all the kernels from all distros can be kept in the right place and not on seperate partitions, making it easier to configure a multiple linux boot system.
CP