Dual boot/Triple boot/Quad Boot

I'm currently running Windows 7, but am very interested in learning the ins and outs of Linux in general.

I can make Win7 dual boot with Ubuntu 11.10 or Fedora 16.

I want to know how to boot to Win7, Ubuntu 11.10, Fedora 16, and possible even more. I have a dedicated hard drive just for the Linux OSs.

The main thing I am wondering is this GRUB vs. GRUB2 thing. Apparently Ubuntu uses GRUB2 and so does OpenSUSE 12.1, and they will probably work fine in a triple boot scenario, but I haven't been able to find out whether Fedora 16 uses GRUB or GRUB2.

Any tips/hints/suggestions will be welcome. I want to be a Linux guy (except for MMOs in my spare time).

If your Win7 machine is grunty enough, why not just use something like VMWare or VirtualBox? - this will save any headaches trying to recover your machine should the boot process fail. Dual booting etc is getting a bit old fashioned these days...

I tried VMware, but it doesn't support using my vid card. It uses its own virtual card and it renders things inside it very badly. Apparently the pay version does, but I'm not paying to use free(ish) software.

Anyway, I want to dual boot. That's what the question asks. I don't mean to sound rude, but virtualization isn't what I asked for help doing.

Hello and Welcome!

Ubuntu has a great track record of automatically detecting other OSs that you may have, and set-up of a dual-boot system is really quite simple with it.
Fedora 16 does indeed use GRUB2, and the set-up of that kind of system is just as easy. At least it used to be... I've not used Fedora since 12, other that trying them out.:rolleyes:
I'm not overly familiar with OpenSUSE, so I can't really comment on that.
Here's what I would do. First, defrag your Windows system, and back-up any important data (just in case). Then, use a partitioning tool such as Parted Magic to clear up space on your drive and create new partitions for Linux. Parted Magic is quite intuitive and easy to use, and has the benefit of detecting most network adapters in case you have questions during the process.
Then install Fedora, and finally Ubuntu. I'd go Ubuntu last simply because it will automatically set your boot menu so that you don't have to fidde with it later.

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Originally Posted by ooleyguy

I tried VMware, but it doesn't support using my vid card. It uses its own virtual card and it renders things inside it very badly. Apparently the pay version does, but I'm not paying to use free(ish) software.

Anyway, I want to dual boot. That's what the question asks. I don't mean to sound rude, but virtualization isn't what I asked for help doing.

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No offence taken, I was just trying to gauge why you needed to dual boot etc... :)

jayd512 posting gave some good points. If your machine has valuable data stored then make sure its safely backed up - I've had a few nasty experiences with dual/triple boot scenarios in the past, mistakes can be made!

With a dual boot (or more) it's usually Windoze first then Linux - most of the main Linux distro's handle GRUB(2) without any worries in my experience but YMMV.

If I want to try out a Linux distro (using the machines physical hardware) I usually do the install directly onto a USB flash drive and boot from that device when I need to try it out or test it. This way I can have several installed distros each on a USB drive and the speed is too bad either.

last i heard, someone was at ~ 140 multiboots

i like easyBCD

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Originally Posted by jonyo

last i heard, someone was at ~ 140 multiboots

i like easyBCD

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As this is (after a time of lurking, i admit) my first post, i begin with:
Hallo to everyone!

I thought i had the solution to my problem when i learned about EasyBCD, but eehh... here i am, realizing that i need help in this matter, as it seems to be of the usual ways to handle multiboot scenarios.
I think this is the right place to introduce my question, but i am aware that i might be wrong and that it needs its own thread. Please tell me if you think this is the case. Ok now down to the matter at hand:

This was my OS-situation until shortly:
OS: preinstalled Win7 on sda1, Mint 11 on sda5

with the Mint install came grub (1.97 i think, though this is grub2 isnt it? )
it wrote itself in mbr and perfectly detected+integrated win7
this setup was pretty straight forward and perfectly working for me.
until recently when i came in the sorry state of having to install xp (for some reasons i want to spare you here, but as long as i understand virtualbox/wine are nogo's for my needs.)

what i did:

- i had to realize that there was some homework to be done (never had the need for more than two OS and bootloader was something to me that i knew exists, and that worked the way it should, so i never bothered to open the hood :-). now i would read(lurk) forums and how-to's searching on grub/grub2 and didnt found it to disencouraging, so i continued...)

- having a second internal drive with space, i made sdb1 the home of xp in addition to the above mentioned two OSes on sda.

- xp bootloader taking over everything
- boot Mint 11 via SuperGRUB cd, restoring grub2 to mbr
-beeing unable to boot into the xp on sdb1
- atempting to add winxp via 40_custom to /boot/grub/grub.cfg
- fiddeling arround, trying to figure out what the "bootmgr is missing" wanted to say
- trying to understand chainloading, reading i forums that grub2 doesnt like chainloading
- becoming uncertain what to do, trying to make sure grub looks in the right place for xp by fiddeling with adding uuid and reading about things like grub2s abbility to detect OSes and more.
-stumbling over EasyBCD. seemed tempting, looked promising so i gave it a shot.
- installed EasyBCD on win7, restored win7 bootloader to mbr, adding both xp and mint to the meny
- feeling like a champ when booting into xp.
- feeling like a fool when booting into mint wasnt working ("cannot find ang0/neogrub/autoneogrub on all drives") any more.
-reading, that EasyBCD should easily detect linux install/grub2 automatically whitch it did not. Not i my case anyway.
-feeling helpless
-realising the possibility of becomming active in the matter of asking for help here,
-struggeling with how to formulate the problem, and here i am...

Situation now:
Win7 on sda1, Mint 11 on sda5
winxp on sdb1
windows/easyBCD bootloader on sda mbr
grub on sda5 and sdb mbr
booting in win7/xp via bootloader possible
mint 11 only via Super grub cd

Goal: just beeing able to boot into all three systems without having to reinstall win7 or mint 11 as this are my working systems.

doesnt matter to me witch bootloader does it, as long as it works. i like to learn about things under the hood, but its starting to eat my days,
and at the end of the day i own a computer to use it (with closed hood ;-) and not to spend my days fiddeling.)
That said i still think there is maybe just a small peace of information wrong/missing/overlooked by me and iam gratefull for any suggestions on how to get to my goal.
I am aware of the likelyhood of having to post all kinds of results of boot-script-fdisk-I kind of information in order for you to be able to even understand my skribbling above. please go ahead and say what you need to know or where in the forum this kind of situation belongs instead.

Grateful, David
ps: sorry for the long post...

A lazy way to increase multi-booting in Linux - PC Perspective Forums

Thank you for the reply, but as i understand it, this solution includes both reinstalling all systems and the use of grub legacy.

yesterday i put grub2 back into sda mbr and i think my main question is this:

How to manually get grub2 to recognize xp in sdb1 and how to fix the "missing bootmgr. reboot with ctrl+alt+del" error during attempted boot into sdb1?

i'd suggest starting a separate thread and linking it to the info you have given here

here's a direct link to your post

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ins...tml#post877068

or you can just copy paste the info you have provided here in your new thread

after a quick glance, looks to me like the way to go, or easiest is install xp first, then 7 followed by mint,

just guessing tho without specifics or other possible unknown factors that may be relevant,

one drive is also doable,

there may also be a quick fix to your current setup