Quad Booting with Partition Magic

[westwarrior]

Ok, its been a while since ive been on the forums, and the time has come for me to start installing Linux Distros..but as always i have tons of questions

i have 1 250GB SATA hard drive, and i want to split it up into a 512mb Swap Partion, 3 15 GB Linux Partions for OpenSuSE10.2, FC6, and Ubuntu 6.10, and the rest is for XP, which is what i mainly use the computer for....so my questions are...what format should the Swap partion be? Since i believe i need to install Boot Magic too, what partion should i make for that? or is that my Swap Partion....not long ago i dual booted Xp onto my new MacBook, is it simply that easy? where the computer restarts and prompts me to install Linux??? Also, once i get all of them installed, how do i go about choosing which OS to start from once i boot? thanks alot

[devils casper]

i wont suggest you Boot Magic. its very buggy and you will face lot of problems.
Dual boot ( or Multi Boot ) is default in All Linux distros. install Windows first and then install Linux distros. each distro will install its own Boot Loader ( GRUB ) in MBR of Harddisk and you will have option to boot up any OS at startup. check this thread for more details.






Casper

[westwarrior]

So i installed OpenSuse 10.2 today, and it works very smoothly..thanks for all the help, i plan on installing FC6 and Ubuntu tomorrow...but i have more questions as usual...i was reading here about multi-booting, and it says i need to copy what was in the previous GRUB into the new GRUB, since with the new install it disables the old one..is this as simple as copying it down on paper and entering it in later? I also noticed that devil's_casper had some trouble mounting a SWAP for FC5, anybody else had this problem in FC6? thanks very much again

[devils casper]

there isn't any SWAP mounting problem in FC6 now. its fixed in FC6. GRUB of Ubuntu, SuSe and all other Linux Distros recognise other installed Distros. problem is with Fedora's GRUB only.

i need to copy what was in the previous GRUB into the new GRUB, since with the new install it disables the old one..is this as simple as copying it down on paper and entering it in later?

yes. just copy and paste. its simple.





Casper