MultiBooting
Skeptic
I have been doing my homework, and I am really starting to like
Free Open Source Software.
In the commercial world, a commercial equivalent of XOSL (EASEUS
Partition Master, VCOM System Commander) would have its own boot
manager to compete with the commercial equivalent of Smart Boot
Manager, and getting the two to co-exist would be a PITA.
In the FOSS world, Smart Boot Manager is integrated into XOSL.
The bad news is that XOSL seems to have been abandoned in 2001,
XOSL2 seems to have been abandoned in February of 2007, and the
xosl2.com website has been abandoned as well.
Here is some info I have gathered. Ranish and Symon both look good.
Comparison of boot loaders
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_boot_loaders
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Boot_Managers/
Extended Operating System Loader (XOSL)
http://www2.arnes.si/~fkomar/xosl.org/
XOSL2
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xosl2
Ranish Smart Boot Manager
www.ranish.com/part/
XOSL and Smart Boot Manager
http://www2.arnes.si/~fkomar/xosl.org/manual/cdrom/index.html
Multibooting with Ranish Partition Manager
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Boot_loaders
Multi-booting Solaris and other operating systems
http://multiboot.solaris-x86.org/
OS-BS, Ranish PM and GRUB
http://multiboot.solaris-x86.org/iii/4.html
Multibooting using Ranish PM
http://trombettworks.com/multi-boot.htm
Wikipedia article on Boot loaders
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Boot_loaders
Ultamate Boot CD
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Multibooting Linux and Vista
http://www.multibooters.co.uk/
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyBCD
Symon Boot manager
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyMon_Bootmanager
http://symon.ru/usr/eng/screens.shtml
http://symon.ru/usr/eng/details.shtml
http://symon.ru/usr/eng/faqs.shtml
http://www.symon.ru/
http://www.google.com/search?q=Symon+Boot+manage
Roland Latour
> I have been doing my homework, and I am really starting to like Free
> Open Source Software.
>
> In the commercial world, a commercial equivalent of XOSL (EASEUS
> Partition Master, VCOM System Commander) would have its own boot manager
> to compete with the commercial equivalent of Smart Boot Manager, and
> getting the two to co-exist would be a PITA. In the FOSS world, Smart
> Boot Manager is integrated into XOSL.
<snip>
I don't see why you went to all that trouble. Just get each OS to write
its bootloader to the first block (superblock) of its own partition,
instead of to the MBR (Master Boot Record), which is the first block of
the disk. Then you can use chainloading under LILO (or GRUB) to load any
of those bootloaders.
See http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/
Applications_GUI_Multimedia/Chainloading_in_Linux
(all on one line), or Google chainloading.
Leon Whyte
I have been and am still using XOSL for a few years and it works just great.
I installed it on a small Linux partition on one of my drives and it writes to
the MBR and then the MBR sends to the XOSL to boot the partition you chose.
It just works. I have 11 40 gig Linux partitions on one of my drives and can
boot to any of them.
I keep adding and or changing the Linux versions to try the new ones out so I
find Xosl just great.
--
Leon
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.
< running Linux >
Joseph H. Rosevear
> I have been doing my homework, and I am really starting to like
> Free Open Source Software.
Great! Glad you like it.
> In the commercial world, a commercial equivalent of XOSL (EASEUS
> Partition Master, VCOM System Commander) would have its own boot
> manager to compete with the commercial equivalent of Smart Boot
> Manager, and getting the two to co-exist would be a PITA.
> In the FOSS world, Smart Boot Manager is integrated into XOSL.
As long as you're talking PITA, why not make things simple and not use
a boot manager. With a little work you can use mkinitrd to make an
init script, put it on a CD with Grub, a kernel and some drivers, and
there you are! Use the CD to boot Slackware and leave Windoze to boot
itself.
Just a suggestion.
-Joe
Michael Black
You don't need that complication. Put lilo on a floppy disk, or I guess
nowadays it would be a USB flash drive. I seem to recall that when I
first installed Slackware, I booted with lilo on a floppy disk, because
I hesitated over installing lilo (there was some warning in the Slackware
installer that I read too much into).
The problem is, one really learns how fast hard drives are when you start
booting with a floppy or a CDROM. It slows the boot down a lot, which
makes it really worth the effort to do away with any schemes that require
a device other than the hard drive for booting.
Michael