Dual boot Gutsy and Hardy

[pkaplan1 at comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Bruce Marshall <bmarsh at bmarsh.com>
> On Thursday 16 October 2008, Neil Winchurst wrote:
> > I have Googled for dual booting but everyone seems to assume that you
> > want to have Linux and Windows. Not so.
> >
> > Can anyone start me off please? Will this be a simple task using the
> > alternate CD?
> 
> Make a new partition  for  root (/)  and  boot (/boot)  I will assume you have 
> a partition all by itself for  /home   but if not, also define a new 
> partition for /home
> 
> Install the system and use the 'manual' definition of partitions.   Assign 
> your new partitions to  /  and /boot   and /home  (new or old)
> 
> Tell it to format (if needed) the new   /   and /boot   and if /home is new, 
> format that too.
> 
> Install the new system.
> 
> It will now boot to the new system.   You will have to edit 
> the /boot/grub/menu.lst  to include the entries for the old system.  When 
> that is done, you can boot the old or new system.
> 
> When I am doing the manual set up of partitions, I also assigned the old 
> partitions in the system to make life easy.   Such as:
> 
> /bootgutsy
> /gutsy
> 
> Thus, when hardy is booted, you will have access to the /bootgutsy and /gutsy 
> partitions for copying files.
> 
> If you made a new /home, you will have to copy the files from gutsy over to 
> your new /home partition.
> 
I would not recommend sharing a /home partition unless you have diffeerent users for each version.  Aside from the potential for conflicting user permissions you may also have conflicting application configuration issues.

In the past, I've installed different distros/versions into different primary partitions and used /boot from the first primary.  Make sure you know how to manually edit /boot/grub/menu.lst or install kgrubeditor
Paul