Multiboot (Vista+OpenSUSE+*unix)

M

muks

Member
Hi,

I've a 250GB hard disk Core2Duo Laptop. It is having 10.67GB Recovery partition and rest is taken by pre-installed Vista Home Premium (Primary partition).
I want to make it a multi-OS system. I was going to install Opensuse 11.1 using EasyBCD however after reading posts in forum I saw:
1. lot of people are having trouble with OpenSUSE.
2. somewhere it was mentioned whenever I'll upgrade the distro the Vista boot or EasyBCD may fail.

Since I am planning to have Vista+OpenSUSE+Ubuntu, and I often upgrade my distro's to the latest release: Do you recommend me to use GRUB directly instead of Vista boot loader?

Regards
Muks
 
Yes, Justin said if you've got multiple Linux and only one Windows, it's easier to use grub as the controlling boot manager.
(EasyBCD is not a boot manager, it's a GUI for the Vista/W7 boot manager)
 
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Grub is generally clever enough to recognize all the existing systems and do the dual-booting for you.
You might have a problem in the future though if Vista does another Service Pack. both SP1 and SP2, replaced the boot manager, and MS is egocentric enough to assume that it must be in charge of the boot, so the grub MBR/PBR might be overwritten by SP3.
 
Terry60 said:
Grub is generally clever enough to recognize all the existing systems and do the dual-booting for you.
You might have a problem in the future though if Vista does another Service Pack. both SP1 and SP2, replaced the boot manager, and MS is egocentric enough to assume that it must be in charge of the boot, so the grub MBR/PBR might be overwritten by SP3.
Click to expand...

Assuming that SP3 will replace the grub:
1. Don't you think that installing GRUB again will solve the problem, then.
2. Or, do you want to say that EasyBCD wont be affected by SP3 and its better to go with EasyBCD than GRUB coz of SP3.
 
Each way (every way come to that) has its own specific advantages and disadvantages. If MS overwrites the boot at sometime in the future, yes you can reinstall grub. I was just pointing it out so you know what happened and what to do about it.
Same advice applies, if your Linux systems outnumber your Windows systems, probably simpler to go with grub unless you have a very good reason not to.
 
1 yes
2 no

With grldr and the correct mneu.lst in place should you need to re-install grub grubinst is your best friend.

grub4dos's wiki is a great place for reference. You can use that or just plain grub. Most of the information there should apply to both.
 
easybcd stills the best for me

If you want to multiboot I preferred to used still easybcd. I already installed opensuse and multiboot. I have a 8-boot desktop xp, vista, ubuntu, opensuse, fedora, freebsd, opensolaris and windows 7, a quadboot laptop xp, 7, opensolaris and macosx leopard 10.5.7. If your going to install opensuse just make sure before you install it theres an option there to install it only to opensuse partition. What oses your going to install so I can guide you?
 
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jessa_jr said:
a quadboot laptop xp, 7, opensolaris and macosx leopard 10.5.7. If your going to install opensuse just make sure before you install it theres an option there to install it only to opensuse partition.
Click to expand...
I didn't get the meaning of your last line.

jessa_jr said:
What oses your going to install so I can guide you?
Click to expand...
I am also looking to make my laptop as tri or quad boot. I cannot say for sure the OS that I am going to install coz I love trying new Distros. However, I've Vista Home Premium pre-installed on my laptop. Now I am going to put OpenSUSE first coz I've heard its GRUB is prob tweaked for openSUSE. Next I may go for OpenGEU (Ubuntu variant having E17 instead of KDE/Gnome). I wont be installing any windows variant for sure.
Waiting for your suggestion. I was about to go ahead with GRUB though.
 
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Muks

Originally Posted by Muks
I didn't get the meaning of your last line.
Click to expand...
Sorry. I mean that before you install it to the hard drive this both opensuse and ubuntu have an options of installing the grub bootloader to his partition only not in the mbr. Then you can call it using easybcd. You can try also of using gparted in partioning and hiding oses.
 
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