multi booting
 

I've been having a blast playing around with my "guinea pig" PC installing various OSes and setting up multiboot.

So far it will boot FreeDOS, DOS62, Win95_OSR2, Win98SE, WinXP_Pro_SP3, and Linux.

Why?

1) To learn the technology

2) So I can boot any of my machines to DOS for development of timing-critical apps and/or apps that need exclusive and unimpeded direct access to the bare metal.

3) To run legacy DOS apps that don't like emulators.

For you multi-booters out there, what boot manager do you use?

Re: multi booting
 

I've always liked LILO.

Re: multi booting
 

Why?

Are you using GRUB right now? Does it do what you need?

Re: multi booting
 

Yes.

Boots logical partitions

Boots disk images

Leaves the partitions unmodified

MBR installed only once

Does not require its own partition

Edit a simple text file to add new boot partitions to the menu

Can manually enter boot commands at boot time if need be

Re: multi booting
 

I use WIndows Boot Manager! Yes, I am not the best with advanced things. I currently have two Windows 7 Installations and an Ubuntu installation. I use WUBI for Ubuntu because it is easy to install and uninstall ubuntu with that boot loader! :D

Re: multi booting
 

I am a big fan of GRUB and GRUB 2. Personally I find that the original GRUB is a bit easier to work with, but that's probably because I grew up with it.

Re: multi booting
 

Could you give some examples?

Re: multi booting
 

Sure--the main thing that comes to my mind is adding new operating system entries to the GRUB boot menu. In the original GRUB, all you needed to do was add an appropriate entry to the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. Maybe something like this:

Whereas in GRUB 2, you cannot edit the corresponding menu file(which I believe is /boot/grub/grub.cfg) by hand like that. Instead, there are two different places you have to look into: /etc/grub.d/ and /etc/default/grub.

/etc/grub.d contains a set of scripts that represent separate entries in the menu(among other things) which you should edit/add to if you want to add more entries.

/etc/default/grub is a customization script for the GRUB 2 menu, which you can use to change preferences, except when it comes to the actual menu entries themselves.

This is the main reason why I prefer the original GRUB--which one looks more convoluted to you? :p

Re: multi booting
 

Me too.

Re: multi booting
 

I prefer GRUB2 Too! However, my family likes Windows Boot Mgr, because they aren't so tech savvy :( . I loved Grub 2 when I had it :D . It, indeed, is quite customizable, and does everything it claims quite well :eek: ! As many people have said before, it is very easy to operate on and get things running smoothly. Corrupting your BSD in Win. Boot Mgr. is hard to fix because you need to reinstall Windows :ahh: . However, GRUB 2 just requires you to edit a text file or so to configure it, meaning you can bring your computer back to life. I also like how it has so many features and how it actually has color, as compared to the Windows Boot Manager.

In short, there are many boot-loaders out there, today, being developed. I use the Windows Boot Manager because I am basically locked into using it. However, I would suggest Grub 2 because, if I understand correctly, you want to multiboot many operating systems.
If you manage to break the bootloader configuration, it is many times easier to fix it in Grub, as compared to Windows. However, I am talking about Win 7. Win 8 Boot manager is completely different!

You need to add many operating systems. That means that you would want to be able to add and remove operating systems with ease, not worrying abouy damaging your MBR!

In short, Go GRUB2!!!

Also, has anyone tried a different boot manager like Burg (Grub Backwards? :confused: )? How was it? Was it easy to use/worth getting?

Guys, this is just my opinion on what I have used before.

Re: multi booting
 

http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html

I use that when I need features that a BIOS lacks like booting from USB.

Re: multi booting
 

I only have one multi-boot machine. I use vitalization, so I have simultaneous access to all OSs, other than access to physical hardware, it works excellent.

Re: multi booting
 

I prefer GRUB2 for two reasons - better auto-config (update-grub) and more features (backgrounds, resolution, timing, more support for OSes).

Re: multi booting
 

What software do you use for virtualization? I would like to use virtualization instead, but don't know where to start!

Re: multi booting
 

I use virtualbox and it works really well. When our team's programming laptop broke, I used my linux laptop that was running windows xp in a virtual machine to run the robot.

Re: multi booting
 

This is a side track from the original point of this topic, so if it is going to be about virtual machine software we should probably make a new topic for that.

Oracle VirtualBox works great but be aware the keyboard in the virtual machine is a little messed up in the last few versions. It does not always have a noticable effect but the inter-character timing is not quite correct. Resulting in some seemingly random behavior.

Re: multi booting
 

Ok. I thought by virtualization, you meant that you switch OSes by using a command or something. There could be some sort of host OS that requires a few MB of RAM, and barely any CPU. The RAM could be rationed and divided, or maybe even dynamic (One OS requires more RAM than other, so the one requiring more get's more)!

I use virtualbox. However, I haven't been able to boot Ubuntu on Virtualbox. My Processor is an i3-2367, so it isn't ideal for virtualization (lowest end processor that Intel manufactures, except celerons). My BIOS says that it supports virtualization. However, I am only able to boot 32-bit Debian! I should be able to install 64-bit Debian. I want to install Ubuntu, however, it always says that I have an i686 processor, so I am using the wrong kernel! What do I do?

Re: multi booting
 

Thank you. Please do that.

Re: multi booting
 

I use Hyper-V (part of server 2008), and VMware.

Re: multi booting
 

I used to use Hyper-V, but I downgraded from 8 Pro to 7 Home. It useed to work well, but Windows 8 just got my nerve because I don't have a touch screen :(

Re: multi booting
 

Back on topic:

Fellow GRUBbers,

Came across something interesting last night.

sda1 (hd0,0) is FAT16 MSDOS bootable partition flagged as active in the MBR.

sda4 (hd0,3) is FAT16 FreeDOS bootable partition

when I execute these GRUB commands:

rootnoverify (hd0,3)
chainloader +1

... The FreeDOS kernel (KERNEL.SYS) is loaded from (hd0,3), but then the MSDOS shell command.com in (hd0,0) is run.

Anybody know why?

Re: multi booting
 

I just tried the above this morning.

Impressive!

Installation was flawless, and I got an old junker Gateway Solo 9550 laptop with no BIOS support for booting USB to successfully boot the collection of bootable USBs in my PC Repair toolkit.

The whole thing fits in the MBR, plus the unused sectors following the MPB and before the first sector of the first partition.

Re: multi booting
 

Glad you like it.

Here are some more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_boot_loaders

Not to topic jack but Yash101's comment about the Metro Windows 8/8.1 interface, try this:
http://www.classicshell.net/

It works *really* well considering it's a 3rd party product.
It's basically free to use.
The only real issue I've had is if it's installed during the Windows 8 to 8.1 upgrade from the Microsoft's App store.
Uninstall ClassicShell first then reinstall after the upgrade.

(Gotta love installing a 3rd party GUI shell patch to get your OS to work the way you were previously forced by Microsoft to use it :). Gotta love the Windows 2012 command line only interface. Starting to think Microsoft is secretly embracing Linux. Hmm suddenly have access issues with my MSDN access...uh oh :D)

Re: multi booting
 

Yes, I know how to use Wikipedia. I'm looking for feedback from CD community on personal experience with multi-boot solutions.

Thanks, but I prefer not to derail this thread with shells and virtual environments. Focus is on multi-boot.

Re: multi booting
 

I agree so I have created a new topic to help out:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=122973