Re: installing SUSE 9.1 over windows XP

From: Kevin Nathan (knathan_at_project54.com)
Date: 06/13/04 

Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 19:10:23 -0600

On 10 Jun 2004 02:11:20 -0700
alion85@hotmail.com (redeamer) wrote:

> do i have additionally install a boot loader for LINUX?

Every OS has to have a bootloader that knows how to boot it. When you
use a third party boot *manager*, it simply either boots the OSes it
knows about, or calls the boot loader for any OSes it doesn't know about
(it's actually more complicated than that, but that's a fair overview).

Linux uses either lilo or grub as it's boot *loader*. MS-DOS and Windows
have their own boot loaders, which they place in the MBR. Lilo and grub
can go pretty much anywhere you please and you just tell your boot
*manager* which partition has the boot loader.

For example, I use XOSL on several boxes, so on those when I install a
Linux distro, I create a small boot partition for it's boot files and
note which physical or logical partition it's on and then tell XOSL to
boot from partition 'xzy'. From what I remember of BootMagic, you can do
pretty much the same thing. You don't need a separate boot partition,
that's just the way I like to do it; there is nothing wrong with telling
the Linux distro to install it's boot loader into the root partition. Do
*not* use the swap partition, however, for the boot loader! :-) 

-- 
Kevin Nathan (Montana, USA)
Open standards. Open source. Open minds.
The command line is the front line.
Linux 2.4.20-4GB-athlon
  7:02pm  up 20 days 19:28,  7 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.05, 0.07

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