Can I dual boot between Fedora and CentOS on a netbook?

[markw10]

I want to be able to use both Fedora and CentOS and have a MSI Wind Netbook that I can install a distro on. Since I want to be able to use both is it possible to make a dual boot system?
This netbook has a 160GB hard drive and I've heard of Grub. I am very new to Linux though but is there an easy way to set up some type of dual boot system that would prompt me at bootup and ask me if I want to boot into Fedora or into CentOS?
I would want both systems stored on a separate partition, 80GB each.

[waterhead]

This is commonly done. When you install Linux, it will look for any existing operating systems, and ask if you want to add them to the grub boot configuration. The last Linux distribution that you install, will be the grub that is used. It will overwrite the previous grub.

This is fine. You may only run into trouble if you then remove the version of Linux that has the grub boot files. That can be fixed too, but don't worry about that now. Just install, and have fun!

Also, I would not install each to mega partitions of 80GB. This is not Windows! I would recommend making a separate partition for your /home files. You then can store files that will not be removed if you decide to try another distro. It is recommended that you have different users (name) for each distro, as it will contain files that are specific to that version of Linux. My quick recommendation:

60GB - CentOS
60GB - Fedora
40GB - /home
2048MB - swap

You also need a swap partition that is usually 1.5 or 2 x the amount of memory that you have. Just subtract it from one of the distros. Some will say that 60GB is too much for a distro, so adjust it as you please.

[markw10]

Thanks. That should help me a lot. Since it will use the GRUB of the last installed distro is there any order they should be installed in? I guess I'm asking if the CentOS or Fedora grub is better. From what I've heard Fedora is upgraded often so maybe it's better to use the CentOS grub. I guess my past with Windows does show a lot. I'm definitely looking forward to a future with Linux!

[jayd512]

You won't have to worry about 'GRUB version'., nor will you have to worry about the order of installation (the boot order is also changeable). The GRUB loader is fairly universal between distros. Just run along as suggested by waterhead.
You shouldn't run into any issues, but we'll help you along if anything comes up.

[markw10]

I installed Fedora 10 on my system and then put the CentOS DVD in to install. I got to the screen where it says:
Installation requires partitioning of your hard drive. By default, a partitioning layout is chosen which is reasonable for most users. You can either choose to use this or create your own. I have the following options:

Remove all partitions on selected drives and create default layout
Remove linux partitions on selected drives and create default layout
Use free space on selected drives and create default layout
Create custom layout

I assume the two first options would not work but when I tried the option, Use Free Space on selected drivers and create default layout it said:

Could not allocate requested partitions: Partitioning failed: Could not allocate partitions as primary partitions. Not enough space left to create partition for /boot.

I then selected Create Custom Layout:

It gave me an option at the bottom saying "Advanced Storage Configuration" which then had an option where I could modified the drive configuration and add a iSCSI target. I assume I don't use this.

If I selected Next I have the screen where I can select my hard drive but I don't know what to do next. In the window at the bottom it has:
LVM Volume Gropus
Vol Group00
LogVol00 ext3
LogVol01 swap

Hard Drives
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1 ext3
/dev/sda2 VolGroup 00 LVM PV
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb1 vfat

When I installed Fedora I did the basic install which if I'm correct should have installed it using 3 partitions, swap, root, and a data partition. I'm just new to this but want to install it so that at bootup via Grub or another way I can choose to boot into Fedora or CentOS and I'm not sure what to do at this point.
Should I do some type of partitioning of the hard drive before installing both Fedora and CentOS or is it best to do as I did, install Fedora and then CentOS after?
I appreciate help with this. Thanks!

[waterhead]

You should not have did the default Fedora install. You should have manually configured the partitions like we discussed before. Fedora likes to create a LVM by default. It is similar to a software RAID, which I'm sure isn't what you wanted here.

You may want to re-install Fedora. This time manually partition the hard drive, and don't create any LVMs, only create the three partitions for Fedora. Leave enough free space for the CentOS partition. You will reuse the /home and swap partitions, and the Fedora / partition, so don't reformat them. You will want to mount them, for access, so tell it to do that without formatting them. You will need to format the new CentOS partition.

Don'tn forget to use different user names for the different OS's. Since they will use the same /home partition, they must have different names.