Booting multiple OSes?

[McVenco]

Not Amiga related but since you guys know a lot of other OSes as well, I'd might as well ask here :-)


I have bought a second HD (80 gig) for my Windows XP machine, and I want to use that to create a multiple OS booting machine.

I was thinking about creating a large (~40 GB) partition for some Linux distro (probably Ubuntu), and a few somewhat smaller partitions (~10 GB) for other OSes so I can fiddle around a bit with those. I was thinking about Haiku/BeOS, Syllable and AROS.


I now have a few questions:

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?

2. I currently have a 160GB harddrive with Windows XP Pro (Sp1) on it. However, it would only let me format it to 128GB (or somewhere around that). Is this a BIOS problem, or a flaw in XP? How do I fix it? I'd rather not install SP2 since my mouse and printer don't work correctly with that.

3. Any other (free) OSes you might suggest taking a look at? Any specification may do (even discontinued ones such as BeOS), as long as I can run it on my Athlon XP2000+ with 256MB RAM (or 512 - I don't need it yet but I might as well upgrade), and as long as they are fun to use :-)


More questions will probably arise along the way, but these are the ones that I can think of now.


Thanks in advance!
Eric

[McVenco]

motorollin wrote:

When you install Linux, for example, it will install the LILO or GRUB bootloader. Many distros will scan your disks for OSes and automatically configure the bootloader to boot any OSes it recognises. If it doesn't do this, or if there are OSes it doesn't know how to boot, you may need to configure the bootloader manually (check LILO or GRUB documentation for more details on how to do this).

Does the Ubuntu distro come with LILO or GRUB? I've tried the Live CD (v6.06) a few times now and I really like the way everything looks, feels and works...
So if there's a good bootloader with it, I'll install from Ubuntu, and I'll figure out how to add the other OSes in there.

[McVenco]

Oliver wrote:

Be prepared for hassles with drivers.  Again, more reading to be done.

I certainly don't have the idea that everything will work immediately, but I mostly want to run a few OSes just for the "geek factor". I might use Ubuntu in a more productive way, but any other OS that I might install is just for fun and playing around.

I've tweaked around with a lot of software in the past to get it running, so I think I might actually have some fun in getting a bootloader to work with 5 or 6 OSes.

But I think I'll first re-format my 160 gig drive and re-install WinXP, so that I can fully use the 160 gig, and not throw away 30+ gig (which is a shame really, I could have put Ubuntu on there :-)



More about OSes: has anyone got experience with more Linux distros or even other OSes?

How's Solaris, for example? Is it a big and slow beast, or does it have some cool features which make it worth while to spend a partition on?

[McVenco]

Wow, lots of info and I guess all the info I need at the moment, thanks people!

I think I will first unlock the full 160GB, that means reinstalling Windows (again), and then I'll fiddle around with only the 80GB drive inside (to avoid any problems with my XP drive). I'll give both Ubuntu and Xubuntu a try, so I can feel the difference. After that I'll set up a bootloader for multiple OSes.

Lots of installs, re-installs and configuring ahead it seems :-)