Flopping Problems

[Tom Adelstein]

On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 10:15 +0300, Ari Torhamo wrote:
> ke, 2005-04-27 kello 20:32 -0700, Shawn Christopher kirjoitti:
> 
> > I mean I know it seems like I am pushing the package that I need to be 
> > using Windows...however I'm really tired of doing what I need to do for 
> > work. and installing Ubuntu. As far as Dual booting...I've had BAD 
> > experiences with that...so any other ideas?
> 
> 
> I have got the impression from this list that generally people using
> Hoary have very little problems with dual boot. I'm not at all an
> experienced or knowledgeable user - you propably no much more about
> computers than I do, but dual boot has always been an easy and problem
> free thing for me to set up - I have done it for several machines
> (allways into one hard drive). Actually there even isn't much to set up
> - it's so automated. As far as you take care not to install over your
> existing Windows partition, you normally should have no worries.
> 
> Was your problem with getting the dual boot to work at all or didn't it
> work properly? Again - I propably can't help you myself, but
> the-ones-who-know-things on this list very well might be able to.
> 
> Sorry about actually not being able to help you :-(
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Ari Torhamo
> 
> 

Ubuntu has done a superior job with GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) --
better than I have seen on any distribution. Normally, I have to
manually modify the /boot/grub/grub.conf or menu.lst files to boot from
more than two operating systems.

In the current stable version of Ubuntu, grub finds all the operating
systems and creates the menu.

Linux and Windows boot differently. Windows uses the boot sectors in any
partition in which it is installed. Linux boots from a kernel in the
directory tree. So, grub installs in the Master Boot Record - the first
sector of the disk. It then points to where the boot kernels exist. In
Linux, they exist in the directory tree in Windows, DOS and OS/2 they
live in the first sector of the partition they inhabit.

The syntax of Grub is straight forward and easy with a slight
difference. hd0,0 is actually /dev/hda1. That shouldn't be a problem.

The main thing, however, is that you won't have worry about modifying
the grub.conf file as Ubuntu has fixed the issue programmatically.
That's one of the differences in Ubuntu. Where a developer might find
something odd with which they can live, Ubuntu looks at the issue from
the user point of view and makes it work for them. 

Tom