Re: [opensuse] Dual boot: Suse does not find non-Suse distros

On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 16:40, Rajko M. wrote:
The "mess" of multiple boot menus is  actually the only fair solution with
reasonable maintenance and development cost.

There is grub, grub2, lilo, BSD, Windows and any other OS specific boot loader
that I have no idea it exists. Combine that with all kernel names and
versions, initrd names and versions, default disk layouts, default
configurations and user customizations (and errors). Number of combinations
that boot loader installer has to handle grows very fast.

Making all of them to appear in the openSUSE grub correctly is not always
possible, and even when it is, it can be very complicated and error prone
process, or better to say guesswork of "his masters mind".

The only problem with openSUSE approach is that not every OS (distro) is
configured to do the same; take care to boot itself correctly, and let the
rest boot trough their own boot loaders, making users confused which approach
is correct.

And yet... up to 11.1, openSUSE did find other installed OSes, and did
set up other bootable OSes correctly (in my experience).... and we had
Grub, Lilo, BSD, Windows, etc., etc. (The only new bit in this
scenario, that I am aware of, is Grub2).

Yes, there is no argument that anything to do with booting and
configuring Grub is complex, but... I still have yet to see a single
answer to this problem that takes into account the fact that openSUSE
did somehow manage do set up Grub with multiple boot partitions in the
past, and that other Linux Distros still seem to be able to manage it
right now. Sure, experts can go and reconfigure Grub or Grub2, or
even switch over to Lilo if they want... yet the Ubuntu user who comes
along and installs openSUSE 11.2 or 11.3 to check it out, all of a
sudden seems to "lose" their previous Ubuntu since it's now missing
from the boot menu they get when they start up their computer. Fixing
this means they have to know how to add their Ubuntu install back into
Grub. Assume you install the other way around though and install
Ubuntu on a system that already has openSUSE 11.2 or 11.3 installed
and whiz bang, you get the Ubuntu Grub (if you take default settings)
with openSUSE 11.2/11.3 right there in the menu.

C.
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