Changing Systems On MultiBoot Machine 240

In comp.os.linux.misc, on Thu 26 January 2006 01:56, (PeteCresswell)

This is where I think that you are creating problems for yourself. I would recommend having one install for your everyday use and a separate parbreastion for each distribution you want to compare (I would keep a couple of parbreastions for this at least).

That is a good idea, but don't make life too difficult for yourself whilst doing it.

I expect that this is again only a frinstance since mouse-over behaviour is application rather than distribution specific, but there may be other differences that make it worth checking how two or three different distributions handle things. snip

I would suggest that to start with, you install your everyday linux distribution, creating a separateboot parbreastion and allow that distro to install grub into the MBR.

For the second and third distributions, install them into their own root parbreastions and tell them to place Grub in the root parbreastion rather than the MBR.

You can then copy the relevant stanzas from each grub.conf-menu.lst into the first installation of grub and go from there. This will give you a list of options in the Grub menu, you will see something like:

Fedora Core 6 Mandriva 2010 Suse Linux 11

Although the version numbers are deliberately wrong in my examples.

You definitely do not want to mess around with asking anything to do with Mircosoft to manipulate linux config files. snip

Not actually sure what happens if you try to boot from a non existant kernel, but I don't think that it is that graceful :-(

However, if for all of your experimental distributions you have followed my suggestion and installed Grub in the root parbreastion, I think that you could have an entry which merely chains to the Grub installation on that parbreastion (sort of like an "other" option), so that in that sense, you would not be choosing something that didn't exist, you would simply not see the name of the distribution in your primary Grub menu. -- Robert HULL If it's there and you can see it - it's real If it's there and you can't see it - it's transparent If it's not there and you can see it - it's virtual If it's not there and you can't see it - it's gone!