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June 18th, 2006 20:00
Grub chain-load
Hello all, I'm sure this has been asked before, but apparently I couldn't think of the right keywords. I would like to dual-boot, by simply resizing the main windows partition, putting in a linux partition (probably extended pointing to a swap and ext3 or Reiser), and slapping grub into the mbr.
But not so fast! Apparently Dell has lots of goodies mysteriously and fickly scattered over the hard drive. So my questions are:
After simply resizing the win part, will the Dell Recovery partition be rendered useless (this is just after the resize, only the partition table touched, not the MBR)?
Can the Dell Recovery partition be chain-loaded?
If I can keep the Recovery partition in tact, then even if I can't chain load I can still boot the Linux partition from a USB drive.
This is a laptop that has yet to be purchased by my uncle as a graduation gift. He's kind of worried about me screwing with the default installation (he actually works at Dell) and the MBR. He's also worried that I'll have to spend too much time fixing things in Linux to keep up with school, since he tried to run Linux on a laptop several years ago. I just have to convince him that I'll spend the same or more time fixing Windows, especially with the experience I've gained over the last year, and that I can install Linux in it's own little corner to behave.
Thanks in advance.
But not so fast! Apparently Dell has lots of goodies mysteriously and fickly scattered over the hard drive. So my questions are:
After simply resizing the win part, will the Dell Recovery partition be rendered useless (this is just after the resize, only the partition table touched, not the MBR)?
Can the Dell Recovery partition be chain-loaded?
If I can keep the Recovery partition in tact, then even if I can't chain load I can still boot the Linux partition from a USB drive.
This is a laptop that has yet to be purchased by my uncle as a graduation gift. He's kind of worried about me screwing with the default installation (he actually works at Dell) and the MBR. He's also worried that I'll have to spend too much time fixing things in Linux to keep up with school, since he tried to run Linux on a laptop several years ago. I just have to convince him that I'll spend the same or more time fixing Windows, especially with the experience I've gained over the last year, and that I can install Linux in it's own little corner to behave.
Thanks in advance.
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Eric BY
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815 Posts
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June 30th, 2006 14:00
I personally don't recommend dual booting. From personal experience I've learned that one OS is typically used more than the other, and the 2nd OS is typically just wasted hard drive space. I've opted for using VMWare on my personal system to access a different operating system. On my Windows system I have a Virtual machine running Fedore Core 5 that works perfectly with little performance loss.