Multibooting

[Rook]

I've heard of dual booting, and how good it is (or at least, can be), but is there any reason not to do triple boot system?

Reason I ask is because I'd like a dual boot with Ubuntu/Vista, but from what I've seen, Vista almost doubles the hardware requirements of most games and such.

Thus I was considering putting XP in as well to keep the cost of the system I buy down, but I don't know how much memory space having 3 OS's would eat up.

Thoughts? (aside from telling me that Vista sucks, since they're selling computers with Vista already loaded on them now)

[Jimmy]

It doesn't do anything to your memory.

All that you would need to do is create a partition for each operating system [of about 1gb for each, i think - it depends on the size of the OS], then install a GRUB or LILO boot loader and you should be on your way.

A simple google should tell you the details.

[Bewildebeast]

http://lifehacker.com/software/ubuntu/hack-attack-how-to-tripleboot-windows-xp-vista-and-ubuntu-193474.php

Obviously it'll chew into your free disk space, but the operating systems you're not using won't take up any space in RAM.

[Rook]

Thanks muchly.

[Bewildebeast]

To be a bit more specific about disk space usage, we have various OSes running in virtual machines and this is how large their virtual hard disks are - they're used for testing and don't have much else besides the OS on them, so this should give you a rough idea of how much you're going to need for each OS

Windows 2000 - 2.3GB
Windows XP - 2.8GB
Windows Vista - 9.5GB
SUSE - 3.3GB
Kubuntu - 2.6GB

[Jimmy]

Lol.
Windows 2000 - 2.3GB
Windows XP - 2.8GB
Windows Vista - 9.5GB
SUSE - 3.3GB
Kubuntu - 2.6GB

[Tiggs]

Lol.
You've got to remember that hard drives are 5-10 times the size they were when XP was first released, but Vista is only 3.4 times the size of XP, so relatively speaking Vista is superior size wise.

People seem to the stuck in the "smaller is better" way of thinking, but memory and storage is cheap these days, so why the hell shouldn't we be using it?

[Jimmy]

Cause I'm a silly willy stuck on an old machine with only a 40gb hard drive, and the motherboard doesn't have space for me to put in another hdd.

Vista would take up 1/4 of my space in this machine, and half of it on my other one.

[Bones]

So don't install vista. :rolleyes:

What you're saying is like declaring that GTA IV can't possibly be good because it won't run on a PS1.

[piemastermike]

Cause I'm a silly willy stuck on an old machine with only a 40gb hard drive, and the motherboard doesn't have space for me to put in another hdd.

Vista would take up 1/4 of my space in this machine, and half of it on my other one.
its not the motherboard you plonker, it's the connectors on the IDE ribbon.

[Rook]

Cause I'm a silly willy stuck on an old machine with only a 40gb hard drive, and the motherboard doesn't have space for me to put in another hdd.

Vista would take up 1/4 of my space in this machine, and half of it on my other one.
You think that's small?

Guess what I'm running right now. Go on, guess.

:notworthy 20GB:notworthy

This is why I asked how big they were going to be.

[Boyinabox]

To be a bit more specific about disk space usage, we have various OSes running in virtual machines and this is how large their virtual hard disks are - they're used for testing and don't have much else besides the OS on them, so this should give you a rough idea of how much you're going to need for each OS

Windows 2000 - 2.3GB
Windows XP - 2.8GB
Windows Vista - 9.5GB
SUSE - 3.3GB
Kubuntu - 2.6GB

I tried setting my system for dual booting a few days ago and found that whilst that may be the minimum space needed to install just the operating system once you start installing apps (even onto a different drive partition or disk) the amount of free space you need on your 'primary' drive goes up an awful lot.
I have no idea why it was but I presume that even installing applications to other drives requires more and more 'common resource' files to be installed to your OS's partition. I had 1gb of space left after installing XP media centre onto a 4gb partition but it went down to a useless 33mb once I'd got my esential programs installed (Steam, itunes, Bittorrent and firefox) even after tweaking as many options as possible to not place stuff on the primary partition.

Anyhoo, I gave up that idea and just gave XP the whole drive as one large partition instead, Ubuntu looks lovely but if you can't get linux friendly drivers for your stuff it ain't worth it. :p

[The Grim Reaper]

When i 'dual booted' vista beta/rtm i just used the bios boot selector. It automatically started xp, but when you want to start vista you just hit F8 and select the other hard drive. But then again, they were on separate hard drives.

Personally, i don't really like Ubuntu too much from trying it yesterday, Its easy as to use, though this annoys me a little bit, as i quite like controlling how everything is setup. I also prefer yum to apt, and KDE to gnome. I think i'll stick with fedora and rpm's.

[piemastermike]

as i quite like controlling how everything is setup.
o_O

what the hell? You can control everything...

[The Grim Reaper]

o_O

what the hell? You can control everything...
Yes, i know you can, but it i suppose its just how different it was, kinda hard to explain what i mean.
Even little things like how it doesnt tell you whats starting at startup.

I suppose those make it more friendly to those who havent used linux before though, so thats a plus. I guess its really trimmed down to what you just need, then you install the extras, while Fedora has almost everything on the dvd and you put on everything at install, which makes it a little bloated, but thats not always bad.

[Martinus]

o_O

what the hell? You can control everything...

I kinda understand what he's getting at. Whilst technically you are correct it's often much easier to build using packages that you know you want rather than paring back on lots of packages that are pre-installed.

I usually install Debian and install everything from a list I keep. It's handier and I know pretty much exactly that I'm not getting 'alternatives' that I'm not going to use.

[Timmeh]

its not the motherboard you plonker, it's the connectors on the IDE ribbon.

That's assuming it's not a SATA motherboard.

If you only have 20gb, I'd pick an OS you like and stick to it. Also, consider investing in some more disk space, I think my browser cache is bigger than 20gb.

[Martinus]

That's assuming it's not a SATA motherboard.

If you only have 20gb, I'd pick an OS you like and stick to it. Also, consider investing in some more disk space, I think my browser cache is bigger than 20gb.

Put that thing away Timmeh and zip up for the love of $deity. ;)

[Rook]

I just had a thought; is it possible to run an OS from an external USB HDD?

That is, have the pre-installed OS on the internal HDD, and an optional OS on an external drive.

[piemastermike]

yeah, just set it to boot off the USB drive (in BIOS)
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ :eng101:

[Timmeh]

It is possible, but not really a viable as a permanent solution. Tooooo slow.