1. How do I set up a bootmenu where I can choose between those OSes (Windows included of course)? Is that even possible with 2 harddrives or do the OSes need to be on one single harddrive to be chosen from?
GRUB can boot drives other than the one it is installed to. I suspect LILO can too, I'm not sure though. I also have no idea which flavors of Windows are bootable this way and which ones just refuse to play nice.
2. I currently have a 160GB harddrive with Windows XP Pro (Sp1) on it.
Study
GRUB manual. Keep XP confined to the 160GB drive all by itself, set the drive secondary so GRUB won't touch it's boot sector and XP won't trash GRUB if some program decides to write something into the MBR (XP should see the 160GB disk as primary and bugger that one, leaving the 80GB alone - see swapping technique below). Set 80GB drive primary, install Ubuntu/GRUB on it, configure GRUB to include XP in it's menu. See
chain-loading.
(From GRUB manual) "If you have installed DOS (or Windows) on a non-first hard disk, you have to use the disk swapping technique, because that OS cannot boot from any disks but the first one."
See
swapping technique.
Try booting XP.
If it works, :-D
If it doesn't, first :boohoo: , then :pissed: . After calming down :rtfm: until :idea: and/or ask someone who actually knows stuff (
I'm just googling crap for posting to build up my geek credibility, but let's keep that a secret, eh? ;-) ).
If you need to install GRUB/LILO and Windows on the same disk, always install Windows first. It doesn't give a rodent's rear about other OSes and will overwrite your MBR with it's own crap thus destroying your GRUB/LILO setup.
I'd say go with Ubuntu 6.10, upgrade to 7.04 when it has matured a bit. (Not that there is anything horribly wrong with it, I just suspect new features spawn some new bugs.) Also,
release notes for 7.04 say 256MB of memory is the minimum requirement, whereas 6.06
notes say 256MB is
recommended minimum, if it means anything.
