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As far as I know all/most of these OS will interfere with your MBR and |
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potentially your /boot partition and install their boot code in there. This |
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is not a problem per se, as long as you are aware of it. Booting from a |
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LiveCD is all you will need to do to fix things. |
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|
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Given the number of OS' that you want to play with I would strongly advise to |
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consider using virtualbox or any similar virtual machine, running in your |
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favourite OS (e.g. Debian as the host) and then create VM images for each |
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guest OS that you want installed. Performance will be only slightly slower |
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than booting into these OS separately from BIOS, but on the other hand you |
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won't need to be repartitioning or zeroing/formatting partitions when you want |
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to get rid of an OS. Also, you may end up running out of partitions - I think |
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SATA used to read up to 15 partitions only. So, with virtualbox you can add |
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new OS images at a click of a button, instead of creating new partitions, |
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moving partitions around and what not. LVM will help with sizing partitions |
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on the fly, but will add another layer of complexity. |
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|
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|
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Before I give specific OS suggestions below, let me propose a booting |
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architecture for separate partitions for you to consider: |
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|
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Create one 'master' boot partition and install GRUB in it with a LiveCD. I'd |
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use legacy GRUB because it is simpler, slimmer and easy to fix. Others may |
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recommend GRUB2, which installs what looks to me like a mini OS in itself and |
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automates a lot of the configuration. I've been less successful editing the |
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boot options from the command line at boot time with GRUB2, but it is more |
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stable these days. Anyway, both will work fine. Never delete this GRUB master |
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partition, or you will need a LiveCD to be able to boot again. |
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|
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I'd create one swap partition for all OS except MSWindows, which will create |
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its own paging file, fragment its own NTFS fs, corrupt this paging file without |
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any help from you and then use up all the partition space and crash! ha, ha, |
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ha! :)) Well, it's not always that bad, but it has happened here more than |
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once. |
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|
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With the disk space available to you, you may create more than one swap |
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partition. I seem to recall (could be wrong) with 32bit OS that 128M was the |
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amount that would be accessed at a time by the kernel or something similar - |
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so people used to create multiple 128M swap partitions. These days with 64bit |
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OS and large RAM modules you may not need swap at all, unless you start |
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running http servers, big databases, etc. In any case, I'd set up a 2G swap |
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as a minimum and up to the size of your RAM as a maximum. |
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|
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Then if you decide to have separate real partitions on the disk for each OS |
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instead of VM images, I would install each OS in their own partition without a |
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separate boot partition for each, to keep the number of partitions down. You |
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will then be able to chainload from your master boot menu.lst any OS boot |
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system. |
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|
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If you will prefer to dual boot MSWindows and at least one main Linux system |
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(which will host your virtual machines) I would refrain from using the |
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MSWindows OS boot system to chainload Linux from it - because it is |
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complicated and messy: |
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|
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http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/226452 |
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|
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Specifics below. |
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|
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PS. I merely express a view here - how I would go about it. There are |
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probably as many views on the things I suggest above as readers on this |
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mailing list. Thankfully with Linux there's more than one way to skin a cat. |
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|
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PPS. No cats were harmed in preparing these suggestions! LOL! :)) |
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|
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On Sunday 04 Dec 2011 08:21:52 srini srini wrote: |
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> @MIck |
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> |
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> I have a 1TB seagate disk drive, which I would like to install... |
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> |
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> 1. Will also have windoze whatever bs it is, since its usage is still in |
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> existence duh! - - |
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|
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If you don't install this/these OS' in a VM, then bear in mind that Vista and |
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Windows 7 create a separate hidden 200MB boot partition. This will eat up one |
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more partition out of the 15 physical partitions on your SATA drive (you can |
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use LVM if you're planning to exceed the 15). |
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|
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|
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> 2. Surely Debian the universal OS - will have x86-64 image. - GNOME - |
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> Kernel 3.x. - bash |
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|
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This can be a workhorse for your guest OS. It doesn't change often and things |
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should *just* work. |
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|
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You can/should store the various OS' images on a separate physical partition. |
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So you can always reinstall/upgrade your Debian without affecting all other OS. |
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|
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|
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> 3. The Ubuntu - will have 32-bit - image. - XFCE - Kernel 3.x. - bash |
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> |
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> 4. The Slackware vanilla (stable), to get deep into the kernel :) - 32-bit |
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> image - registers and argument handling. - fluxbox - Kernel 2.xx.x - bash |
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|
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Fluxbox is slim but needs a lot of configuration to make it look nice. I'd |
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consider Englightenment (e17) from svn because it is both lighter on resources |
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and looks nicer with minimal configuration. |
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|
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|
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> 5. Voiding Gentoo is like keeping the penguin out of ice cap, so will make |
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> space for it. -x86-32 image - KDE - Kernel 3.x. - sh |
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|
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Your Gentoo will take more space than all the binary distros. Depending on |
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how many DEs you will install I'd bargain for 10-20G. |
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|
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You could have a common home partition for your various OS', but I probably |
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would not, since I would want to have separate user configurations of |
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potentially the same apps. |
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|
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|
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> 6. Thinking of legacy commercial unix solaris 5/09 (the original unix of |
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> them all) - 32-bit image - CDE - woohoo! |
112 |
> |
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> I know its a bit whimsical, but would love to work on these OS'es except |
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> the #1 in order. |
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> |
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> Yes I have a PC clone, thus MBR. |
117 |
> |
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> Any advise is welcome. |
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|
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HTH. |
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-- |
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Regards, |
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Mick |