Dual booting: Ubuntu LTS and openSUSE 12.1

[Pongo A. Pan]

On Sun, 2011-11-27 at 11:53 -0500, LinuxIsOne wrote:

> Now, doubts:
> 
> Can one please elaborate in details about the above? The querries:
> 
> 1. Ubuntu LTS has GRUB 2 while openSUSE 12.1 has GRUB LEGACY (GRUB 1), so
> which to install first so that the main boot loader works according to
> that...?
> 
> 2. Suppose I install Ubuntu first, should I make 3 partitions as follows:
> 
> /root
> /boot
> /swap
> 
No, /swap, /, and /home.

> 3. Editing /boot/grub/menu.lst file through Ubuntu LTS would make changes
> in the file of menu.lst of openSUSE too? Or how would it work....
> 
> Can one explain these confusing geeky matter....?


What I've done in the past is just install the distro which uses grub 2
first and then install the one which uses grub legacy second and specify
that no boot loader at all be used.  This is fairly easy to do with
openSUSE's excellent installer (under "Extras" on the boot configuration
screen if memory serves).  Then reboot to the grub 2 distro and sudo
update-grub: the grub legacy distro will be found and added
to /boot/grub.cfg automatically.  

Any number of distros can share the same swap space and it is easy to
have a large common data space and small home partitions with common
stuff like Music, Documents, and Downloads connected with symlinks.
I've currently got Ubuntu, Mint, Sabayon and openSUSE on this machine,
all sharing the same swap and data.  If I can do it, it's not hard.


-- 
pongo pan
Sun, 27 Nov 2011 09:22:32 -0800
Aurelius up 40 min, 1 user, load average: 0.02, 0.08, 0.19
Linux 3.0.0-12-generic
Linux Mint 12 Lisa, GNOME Shell 3.2.1