Triple boot

[Bo Grimes]

On Sat, Nov 01, 2008 at 10:29:30AM -0500, Rajiv Vyas wrote:
> I have installed XP and am planning to installing 8.10 on one portion and
> Madriva on the remaining. I've never triple booted before. My questions are:
> should I install 8.10 first or Mandriva; and two, how do I partition the
> drive when installing 8.10?


I've never triple booted, but if it were me, I'd use
http://wubi-installer.org/ to install Ubuntu first and then install
Mandriva.  My bet is that would be the easiest way.

As to the partitioning, I've never used WUBI, but it should walk you through
it.  I'm not sure where the pitfalls are here, but I bet you can share the
swap partition.

Assuming you have one drive, when you install Ubuntu, you'll shrink your
NTFS partition and create one for Ubuntu.  Then you'll have something /like/
hda1 as boot, hda2 as Windows XP and hda3 as swap.  Assuming you don't want
/home on a seperate partition (I keep mine on a seperate drive).

Then when you install Mandriva, you'll have to shrink either the Ubuntu or
Windows partion to create another, but you should be able to use the same
swap.

I would plan out a partition scheme in advance, exactly how much space I
wanted to leave for Windows and how much for each Linux.  I would probably
get a second drive, in fact, and put both Ubuntu and Mandriva on it (hdb or
sdb)  Then I would downloand GParted live
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php and use that to get my
partitioning done before I ever installed anything.

If I've confused you, ignore me and wait for more competent help.  But as to
the order, I'd do Ubuntu and then Mandriva, assuming you have enough space,
both Ubuntu and Mandriva should walk you though the partitioning and
installation of the boot loader.