[wellylug] More than one Linux Distro on a PC
Rob van der Linde
robvdl at gmail.com
Tue Aug 12 22:38:23 NZST 2008
It is actually possible to use one copy of grub, edit the config file by
hand (/boot/grub/menu.lst). This is how I boot into FreeBSD. GRUB can
chainload other bootloaders, that's how it starts FreeBSD's BTX
bootloader and also Windows. It can boot other Linux distros as well,
but you might need to edit the config file by hand once again.
Then I don't know what would happen if, say my other OS was Fedora, and
that had a kernel upgrade through the automatic updates, would I
manually have to update the grub config file again for this, or could
Fedora be instructed to update Grub on another partition? It is
something I want to find out anyway after getting some more hard drive
space I plan to add Fedora.
If you do end up editing the config file by hand, in Ubuntu you should
make sure you put your new OS entries _after_ the "#end automagic kernel
list" section, that way if you get Ubuntu updates, it doesn't mess with
your manual OS entries.
There are also some GUI grub editing tools, both KDE and Gnome, the KDE
app being the most reliable from my experience.
On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 21:50 +1200, Jethro Carr wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 19:30 +1200, Tim O'Flaherty wrote:
> > In a fit of enthusiasm, I'd like to run multiple distros on my PC. I'm
> > currently running Kubuntu and want to also install Red Hat or similar.
> >
> > I'm assuming that the first thing I would need to do is to make a new /
> > directory in order to install the 2nd distro on (which would not be too
> > hard)
> >
> > When it comes to the /home partition, is it better to create a new /home? Or
> > could I use the /home directory/partition that currently exists.
> >
> > Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks :)
>
> hi Tim,
>
> You will need a separate root (/) partition for each distribution, but
> you can share the /home partition.
>
> Note that there can be some issues, where if one distribution has a
> newer software version that the other, some of the config files in
> the /home directory may cause problems.
>
> Also note that by default, the latest distribution will replace the
> bootloader to boot itself, and may or may not include options for other
> distributions on the system.
>
> The best way to test multiple systems is using virtual machines - such
> as QEMU, vmware, KVM or Xen, since you can't mess up your current system
> with them.
>
> regards,
> jethro
>
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