Boot Linux, BSD, and OS X from Vista

An anonymous reader writes, "NeoSmart Technologies has just released EasyBCD 1.5, complete with support for Vista, Windows NT/2k/XP, and Windows 9x/ME. EasyBCD 1.5 adds experimental support for dual-booting any of these along with Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD — straight from the Windows Vista bootloader without any additional configuration needed!" From the article: "Windows Vista's new bootmanager is a double-edged sword. It's one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence, and a far cry from the very limiting boot.ini of legacy Windows operating systems. But it overwrites the MBR without a second thought, and doesn't provide any means for users of alternate operating systems and boot managers to use their old system. That's where EasyBCD 1.5 comes in!" EasyBCD 1.5 is free.

Comments

BCD?

[convolvatron]

i've always found bcd quite easy. just throw away a large fraction of the legitimate encodings...wait, what?

No Wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

EasyBCD 1.5 is free

Yeah, they get free ads on slashdot, so their adbudget is way low.

Surprise, surprise.

[Eideewt]

"But it overwrites the MBR without a second thought...."

Well, who would have expected Microsoft to do that?

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

It's nothing new really. When I used to install Win98 as an afterthought alongside a Linux distro, I could be sure the lilo mbr would be trashed, and I made sure I had a boot floppy handy to boot back into linux and reinstall lilo.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[Jonah Hex]

I've got a MSI mobo (K7N2G-ILSR) that for some odd reason requires the DDO from Western Digital to be loaded to see my full 250GB. Since Vista replaces the boot sector with a new one it trashed the DDO and only showed the drive as around 32GB. :( I sure didn't expect it, especially since XP plays nicely with DDO. I think I'll wait for a new computer before trying it again.

Jonah HEX

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[Eideewt]

Tell me about it. I would absolutely love to install XP alongside Linux because there are a few games I'd like to play on my newish video card, but I sure don't want to mess with Windows's brainless installer.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell what exactly the introduction means, here. The Windows installer has _always_ felt it has the right to overwrite the MBR, at least as far back as Windows 95. But, it only overwrites the MBR if you run the installer or "fdisk /mbr". Are they trying to suggest that Vista is going to overwrite the MBR more often (eg. every time you boot or something)?

The other thing I'm still not clear on is why someone would care about this boot loader, rather than grub or lilo. What's the significance?

(I'd be happy if the Windows installer at least didn't overwrite the first sectors of other disks. Last time I reinstalled XP, it overwrote the first sector on a FAT32 partition and made the disk unusuable. Had to read the FAT specification and guess at values to make the drive readable again.)

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[LindseyJ]

So install XP first, then install Linux with lilo/GRUB. That works perfectly.

No need to invent problems please.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[fistfullast33l]

I have no problem with XP and Linux alongside each other. Install Windows first, then install Linux second. Windows never knows Linux even exists. I even have Windows on one hard drive and Linux on another. I didn't have to do anything, GRUB did it all.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[slamb]

It's nothing new really. When I used to install Win98 as an afterthought alongside a Linux distro, I could be sure the lilo mbr would be trashed, and I made sure I had a boot floppy handy to boot back into linux and reinstall lilo.

Consider yourself lucky. When I installed Windows XP alongside Linux, it trashed my entire hard drive. That was the last time I ever installed Windows. The system simply can not be trusted. I use Linux and OS X exclusively now.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[HoboMaster]

I've had Red Hat (years ago) completely corrupt my HD while shutting down. Obviously I should never use any Linux distro ever again!

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[drinkypoo]

And for the record, if you have a livecd, you can always boot from that, chroot to your actual linux install (after playing with mount a bit) and then re-run grub or lilo. Or, you could make a grub floppy, so you can reinstall grub to your MBR afterwards. Or, you could install your boot loader to your linux partition, instead of to the MBR, and Windows will very happily boot it. Or, you could do the above, but use boot commander (or similar) to change the active partition and boot from it.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[drinkypoo]

Honestly, if you have any hardware that requires DDO, you should get rid of it immediately and get something better. I just had to go through a fight with it to get XP to install on someone's computer and it was just stupid. You could probably just get a PCI ATA card for ten bucks that would do the job, though, since they have their own BIOS. Well, make sure you get one with its own BIOS, that is :)

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[SnprBoB86]

Why does Windows setup lay down a new boot sector? http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/12/ 20/505887.aspx

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[sumdumass]

What if he is like me and already has a working, tweeked and otherwise perfected install of linux running. I'm sure there has to be an easier way then trashing that, installing windows first then rebuilding your linux install.

Personaly, I choose to instal lilo onto a floppy (the boot code). Then go in later and move it to the hard drive. This allows me to boot to a boot disk and streight into linux if neccesary. Also it allows for a backup of lilo's config in case windows trashes the partition linux is on.

Something i'm wondering is, Did microsoft do this in order to screw open source boot loaders and make the act of dual booting into a free operating system more dificult? It apears that the site is down for the EasyBCD loader. I cannot tell if it is free as in opensource free or just free as in no costs for now free. It could directly effect the way some distro's are compatible with VIsta.

I'm also wondering if the "opensource" free version if any, would be GPLv3 compatible because microsoft will no doubtly have certain levels of pattents pertaining to the vista boot loader that the EasyBCD guys might not be able to control enough to be GPLv3 compliant. Not to mention that newer microsoft OS's typicly create a volume serial number that is tied into booting and operation of the OS. This is most evident when cloning drives and when it doesn't keep the corect serial you get errors on booting. How would this be effected by the ANTI-TIVO type wording in the GPLv3 when a GPLed product is working with the code or programs? I Think some clearification might be in order on this. I have raised simular questions before with products like Itunes and Hardware that locks certain performances out in cheaper versions and the answer is always, they shouldn't be doing that or the Closed app should be open. I'm sure booting to vista in a free way might be more important then forcing apple to opensource Itunes in order to keep a GPLv3 frontend compatible with the GPL.

An no, I'm not trolling. These are legit concerns with the GPLv3 brought up by others too. I'm just putting them into relvent terms that can be related to in this context. It would suck donkey balls if GPLv3 licensed bootloaders are incompatible to dual booting with microsoft operating systems because of this. Especial when the entire idea behind the changes is to control the manufacturers hardware with previous versions of the GPL claims is outside the GPL's scope.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[drinkypoo]

Haha, I like how when you point out the fallibility of this guy's statement, you get modded down. Proof the slashdot moderation system is working! If Windows eats your partition table, you can be pretty sure that either you are having problems with LBA modes and translation, you botched the partitioning in the first place, or you botched the part of partitioning that you do in windows.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[HoboMaster]

Using anecdotal evidence that bashes windows is +3. Using anecdotal evidence that bashes Linux is trolling.

Funniest part? I use Ubuntu all the time.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[Eideewt]

Ah, yes. Hindsight. At the time I wasn't planning to upgrade, and didn't have any games that didn't run better on my other computer. That would have worked perfectly indeed.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[LindseyJ]

What if he is like me and already has a working, tweeked and otherwise perfected install of linux running. I'm sure there has to be an easier way then trashing that, installing windows first then rebuilding your linux install.

Tarball /, put it on a backup drive. Install Windows. Install Linux with GRUB/whatever. Untar / back out again. Viola, you've successfully preserved your "working, tweeked and otherwise perfected install of linux". I do this all the time if I have to migrate to another box for whatever reason.

As for the rest of your post, this entire subject is something completely outside the realm of things I'm willing to care about. I use XP for games on a desktop with resonably up-to-date hardware. Never had any problems with it whatsoever. I use Linux on a laptop for everything else. Never had any problems with it whatsoever.

So this is pretty much a moot issue with me.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[Eideewt]

Yes, but it's a little late for that now.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[Eideewt]

Sure, it won't do it unless you're actually installing, but I think that's hassle enough for most of us. I imagine there are plenty of people with Linux/XP installs who will want to transition to Linux/Vista (or Linux/XP/Vista or simply XP/Vista, for compatability) and won't appreciate being required to work around this installer, when it could have attempted to detect other OSes. I guess Windows users have probably been conditioned to accept it by now.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[slamb]

I've had Red Hat (years ago) completely corrupt my HD while shutting down. Obviously I should never use any Linux distro ever again!

That's a horrible bug, but did they fix it or just document in a KnowledgeBase that "sometimes it completely corrupts your HD; this is normal". If the latter, then I could certainly understand why you'd share my desire to never use the system in question again. But I doubt it - I would be shocked to hear that attitude from Linux developers.

[in a later post] Using anecdotal evidence that bashes windows is +3. Using anecdotal evidence that bashes Linux is trolling.

This isn't anecdotal evidence; it is fully scientific.

I start using a given operating system considering as true the falsifiable statement "the developers of this OS will attempt to fix any problem that causes total data loss". I won't use any system for which that statement has been falsified. One solid example is sufficient do so, and for Windows I have a well-documented one. (Did you see the KnowledgeBase article?) The entire operating system is crap. I won't use it.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[AgentGibbled]

What if he is like me and already has a working, tweeked and otherwise perfected install of linux running. I'm sure there has to be an easier way then trashing that, installing windows first then rebuilding your linux install.

Uh... the windows installer doesn't trash the entire linux install (or even the bootloader). It just overwrites the MBR to point it at the windows bootloader instead of whatever was there before. Incidentally, this is exactly what the linux bootloaders do when they're installed. The "easier way" that you're looking for is to simply overwrite Windows' MBR entry with one that points back at the bootloader that you wanted.

Personaly, I choose to instal lilo onto a floppy (the boot code). Then go in later and move it to the hard drive. This allows me to boot to a boot disk and streight into linux if neccesary. Also it allows for a backup of lilo's config in case windows trashes the partition linux is on.

It turns out that you're close. The simplest way of fixing the MBR after the windows installer overwrites it is to have some bootable media (floppy, CD, USB Drive, whatever) with your bootloader of choice on it. Use that to boot your system, and reinstall it to the MBR.

I don't speak lilo, but in grub it looks like:

root (hd0,0) (or whichever partition grub is installed on)
setup (hd0)

The whole procedure takes a couple of minutes, and it's much easier than having to re-install linux as all your settings and whatnot are preserved by virtue of never having gone anywhere in the first place.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[ozmanjusri]

Haha, I like how when you point out the fallibility of this guy's statement, you get modded down. Proof the slashdot moderation system is working!

A posting mentioning a Microsoft flaw relevant to TFA, complete with link to MSDN knowledgebase article about the flaw, now has lower points than an entirely unsubstantiated criticism of an OS not under discussion in TFA.

Yup, the mod point system is working well for MS shills. Shame it's spoiling the discussion for the rest of us.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[HoboMaster]

I have installed windows on a linux machine many times. Not once has it destroyed the hard drive. MBR, yes. Linux partition, no. All I had to do is go drop a new boot-loader on the machine. Something went wrong, that sucks (a lot), I understand. But that's hardly grounds to declare an entire OS "crap."

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[slamb]

I have installed windows on a linux machine many times. Not once has it destroyed the hard drive. MBR, yes. Linux partition, no. All I had to do is go drop a new boot-loader on the machine. Something went wrong, that sucks (a lot), I understand. But that's hardly grounds to declare an entire OS "crap."

It's not that "something went wrong" one time out of many. If you follow a specific, reasonable sequence of actions, the contents of your hard drive will be destroyed 100% of the time. Furthermore, the makers of the OS already knew about this (presumably by someone else's hard drive being destroyed) and decided it wasn't important enough to fix. They just said "this is normal" in a place no one would ever find until after their hard drive had been destroyed. An open source developer would get lynched for that.

How many times you successfully followed a different procedure is totally irrelevant. Nowhere in the installation instructions does it say "don't do this or your hard drive will be destroyed". It was a reasonable way to partition my hard disk, but it made Windows go crazy and delete everything, and the developers don't even care. Why should I ever use that system again? Why should anyone ever use that system again?

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[ben there...]

I've run with multiple partitions in several different configurations since XP came out. I've never seen that happen. XP is currently on the second partition of my first disk. I believe it told me during setup that it would be formatting the second partition as NTFS (system), first partition as NTFS (boot).

Now that I've checked the KB to confirm what I had recalled, I'm positive that it asks for confirmation for both partitions. See kb313348, step 11:

Note If you deleted and created a new System partition, but you are installing Windows XP on a different partition, you will be prompted to select a file system for both the System and startup partitions.

That means that you will see the following menu twice, once for each partition:

* Format the partition by using the NTFS file system (Quick)
* Format the partition by using the FAT file system (Quick)
* Format the partition by using the NTFS file system
* Format the partition by using the FAT file system
* Leave the current file system intact (no changes)

If you choose to format 2 different partitions without paying attention, how is that MS's fault?

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[slamb]

Note If you deleted and created a new System partition, but you are installing Windows XP on a different partition, you will be prompted to select a file system for both the System and startup partitions.

I didn't modify the partition table during Windows XP installation, so this KB article is not relevant. What I did was try to install to an existing system with an unformatted NTFS partition as part of the following layout:

...umm, slashdot's lameness filter won't let me post it here, so I've updated the advogato post. It's the actual fdisk layout you would need to reproduce this problem.

If you choose to format 2 different partitions without paying attention, how is that MS's fault?

If they had asked me that question twice, I would indeed have been suspicious. But as I recall (and this is reproducible; if you distrust my memory, you're welcome to try it yourself), it only asked once, and it didn't give me any clue what partition it was talking about. Certainly nothing said "would you like to format as NTFS this existing partition you have marked as ext3?"

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

So...

Make sure that you've got a backup(!)

Take a copy of the partition table and MBR of the disk that you boot off:
dd if=/dev/hda of=/somewhere/hda_512.txt bs=512 count=1
(in 99% of cases if it's IDE; if its SATA it'll probably be /dev/sda0)
and keep that file safe.

Install Windows, taking care not to change any partition sizes or overwrite any partition that you don't want to lose (but you've got a backup, anyway...). It'll probably offer to format some partitions you don't want it to, so don't let it.

Boot off a live CD.

Stick your old MBR and partition table back.
dd if=/whereveryouputthefile/hda_512.txt of=/dev/hda bs=512 count-1
(or whatever if a different IDE boot device or not IDE)

Next, put in what the Linux installer would have added if it had found Windows already there. If LILO the chances are it would have been something like:

other=/dev/hda2
        optional
        label=w2k

(and of course /dev/hda2 may be somewhere else - do the Maths based on where you install Windows)

You'll have to google for the grub one I'm afraid. Even if it doesn't boot at this stage, if you don't overwrite any Linux data you can always boot off a Live CD and put your old MBR back.

For info, the partition table is actually the first 446 bytes of those 512. Also, on a Redhat-based LILO IDE system a copy of this will
have been taken (at the time of install I believe) into /boot/boot.0300. On a SCSI system it will be boot.0800. Useful for restoring if you don't have an MBR copy and things get trashed.

CAVEAT:
I've just come back from the pub and so you might want to sanity check some of this with Usenet (if you're feeling like a wuss).

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[grim4593]

That becomes more difficult when I have a laptop that does not have a floppy drive :/

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[ben there...]

Note If you deleted and created a new System partition, but you are installing Windows XP on a different partition, you will be prompted to select a file system for both the System and startup partitions.

I didn't modify the partition table during Windows XP installation, so this KB article is not relevant. What I did was try to install to an existing system with an unformatted NTFS partition as part of the following layout:

I believe the note is slightly inaccurate. It should say "If you have a partition before the partition you are installing Windows to, that is formatted anything other than FAT/FAT32/NTFS, or unformatted, it must be reformatted along with the Windows partition."

I always create a 1 GB boot/pagefile partition and a Windows partition when installing Windows, so I remember the prompt appearing twice, which confused me a little the first time, but I paused and figured out it needed to put the bootloader on the first partition. It still screws up my drive letters though, so I actually need to hide that partition, install Windows, then unhide that partition to make the second partition C:\. PartitionMagic sure comes in handy and I wish there was a full featured GPL alternative. Anyway, that's all way offtopic.

I'm almost positive it asks twice, but I can't refresh my memory without formatting the first partition to get to the second prompt, which would have to be one of my working partitions I have now. ;-)

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[dryeo]

When installing win9x alongside OS/2 it always disabled the IBM Bootmanager and announced that you could never use OS/2 again as it was gone.
Simple fix was to start fdisk and set the Bootmanager partition active.
Win2k when first out changed something in the Bootmanager partition making it unusable. Service pack 1 fixed it and the Win2k install actually finally said to reactivate the Bootmanager partition after install.
I hate to think how many OS/2 installs were lost by MSes practices.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[Eideewt]

The problem is that I keep hearing horror stories about Windows messing up drives, and I'm not entirely sure what goes on during the Windows installer anymore. Presumably it prompts you for the partition you want to install to (no problem then), but I don't recall seeing it do so in the past. I don't have a backup drive to copy my installation over to, so I'm not in the mood for experimentation. I guess I don't much care that it overwrites the MBR (although it would be nice if I could tell it not to), but I'm not sure it won't decide to erase other things too.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[dryeo]

Or a fat partition at the end of the drive, especially with other partitions in between that DOS (including win9x) couldn't recognize. This was a bug for many years in DOS that hopefully is cured now that DOS is gone.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[maop]

Windows does not overwrite any partition that you do not tell it to. It just overwrites the MBR and the partition you choose to put Windows on. Install Windows and then your old boot loader.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[dwilcox]

Linux for dummies shows how to shut down Linux

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[slamb]

I believe the note is slightly inaccurate. It should say "If you have a partition before the partition you are installing Windows to, that is formatted anything other than FAT/FAT32/NTFS, or unformatted, it must be reformatted along with the Windows partition."

That seems more in line with the KB article I linked to, but it's a huge difference. This badly violates the principle of "the system should not touch an existing partition of a foreign type without the user's permission". And "reformat unformatted partition?" doesn't count - it should be smart enough to know the answer is no, but at least the question should be "reformat as NTFS extended partition 2 of size XXX that's marked as ext3?"

I'm almost positive it asks twice, but I can't refresh my memory without formatting the first partition to get to the second prompt, which would have to be one of my working partitions I have now. ;-)

That's an important observation. Even if you are right about the two prompts (and maybe we have slightly different situations; it sounds like both of your partitions are tagged as NTFS), it's still badly broken. If it's already destroyed your data by the time you know anything is wrong, there's a huge problem.

Oh, by the way:

PartitionMagic sure comes in handy and I wish there was a full featured GPL alternative. Anyway, that's all way offtopic.

GNU parted doesn't speak NTFS, but I believe it can do all the Partition Magicy things to a Linux system.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[HoboMaster]

The whole point is that Windows doesn't know it's formatted as another filesystem. It doesn't know any filesystems other than FAT/FAT32/NTFS. All it sees is a partition in no known format, and assumes it is just random unformatted bits. It isn't Windows' fault that you didn't check your partition table (always, always triple check that before formatting drives!!!).

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[slamb]

The whole point is that Windows doesn't know it's formatted as another filesystem. It doesn't know any filesystems other than FAT/FAT32/NTFS. All it sees is a partition in no known format, and assumes it is just random unformatted bits. It isn't Windows' fault that you didn't check your partition table (always, always triple check that before formatting drives!!!).

Are you being deliberately dense? My partition table was right; I've pasted the actual contents here. Windows doesn't need to understand ext3 to know that partition type ID 0x83 means "something I shouldn't mess with".

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[slamb]

If Windows eats your partition table, you can be pretty sure that either you are having problems with LBA modes and translation, you botched the partitioning in the first place, or you botched the part of partitioning that you do in windows.

I am sure that none of those things happened. Read the KnowledgeBase article I linked to. I've also added to my advogato post the actual partition layout in question.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[sumdumass]

If you have more then one partitions and install windows to the second partition, wich is typicle if you already have linux installed, windows can/will reformat your first partition.

This is telling windows to install and format hda2 and it reformats hda1 in the process. Now, I know usualy people will install to a second hardrive but in the situation were a person builds a new system with only one drive, Partitions it acordingly with the knowledge of installing windows down the road when funds are availible for a retail copy, you could have a problem. And i don't think that scenario is too far off from what might happen in real life. Actualy, it fits in real nice with the discusion at hand.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[maop]

Yeah I do have each OS on a different HD. The nice thing is you can get a high quality 250GB HD for $90.

Re:Surprise, surprise.

[Ashe Tyrael]

Some versions of parted do speak ntfs. Or at least, they speak enough ntfs to be able to resize an ntfs partition on the fly.

Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch

[mpapet]

This one won't make it to the gold master.

Kind of like stealing from a Las Vegas casino. Won't happen.

Re:Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch

[Anonymous Coward]

Working as intended. Just like it did in the NT and XP installers.

Re:Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch

[Anonymous Coward]

Overwriting the MBR is reckless, it isn't their data and their OS is almost surely relegated to second place for gaming. Class::action()

Re:Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch

[HTH NE1]

Overwriting the MBR is reckless, it isn't their data.... Class::action()

Have you checked your license agreement?

Re:Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch

[AKAImBatman]

Overwriting the MBR is reckless, it isn't their data

In case you didn't notice, you are installing an operating system. Generally speaking, machines have always shipped with one OS to control the entire system. It is certainly *not* unreasonable for Microsoft to overwrite the MBR. Especially when they expect that their OS will be the only one. You'd have a hard time convincing a judge otherwise.

The fact that Microsoft hasn't improved this part of the install as more hobby OSes have showed up just goes to show how little they care about letting you use your hardware as you want to use it. But they are under no obligations, especially when the installer warns you to make backups before you run it.

Re:Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? Photography, geneology, ableton live, IM and home video of the baby? Windows is the hobby OS, and there are thousands of people who dual boot to play games but do all their real work on *nix.

Re:Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you checked your license agreement?

Yes, and oddly enough I can't seem to find my signature anywhere on it.

Re:Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch

[Bill Grates]

I disagree with this. In the context of Microsoft's proven anti-competitive
behaviour this is an issue that attacks at the heart of consumer choice. Certainly
Microsoft can and probably should overwrite the MBR during installation by default.
However the ease by which an option could be implemented to override this for
advanced users along with a message - "you almost certainly don't want to be doing
this", would make it difficult for microsoft to justify their position given their
prior record of monopolisitic practices.

It is similar to the bundling arguments that have been used successfully against
Microsoft in the past - except in this case there is a real and direct impediment
to competition not just implied since you cannot even continue to use an existing
installed OS on the drive (without some positive action and intervention on the part
of the user to restore grub, lilo etc). I suspect that Courts (even US ones) would
take a dim view of this if it were challenged on trade restraint grounds.

dd if=/dev/hda of=my_mbr bs=512 count=1

Re:Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch

[AKAImBatman]

In the context of Microsoft's proven anti-competitive behaviour this is an issue that attacks at the heart of consumer choice.

A judge would ask you pointedly, "If you make a choice in an Operating System other than Windows, than why are you keeping Windows around?"

You'd probably go into a long spiel about needing it for games and stuff, but that wouldn't impress the judge. He'd simply think you're looking to make a mountain out of a molehill and dismiss the case.

Re:Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch

[4of12]

It is certainly *not* unreasonable for Microsoft to overwrite the MBR. Especially when they expect that their OS will be the only one.

I recognize that Microsoft practically adheres to the The Highlander Theory of OS installation. And, practically, since Windows installations have been screwed over by MBR viruses many times in the past I understand where the attitude can be justified.

But this reality sure makes it ironic to see MS's courtroom antics when they try to show that alternative operating systems are bona fide competitors (as if corporate IT organizations spend more than a millisecond considering alternatives to their huge investment in lock-in Windows ware.)

Re:Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch

[Bill Grates]

In most of these kinds of things you would be arguing on policy gounds addressing the
statutory (legally defined) policy tests in order to obtain a personal remedy that might have more
general implications than for just the individual in a case. Whether i personally have a preference
to run Windows or both systems together or even just alternative OS without Windows is probably largely
irrelevant to the merit of any case.

That said often courts will impose additional tests on a plaintiff as to whether they are a
'proper plaintiff' in any particular case even where it can be demonstrated that the potential
defendant is prima facie in breach the law. Often the test applied will be specific damage to the defendant.
I really dont know - it would probably depend on specific law and other specific facts.

I do know that our company that develops with windows and linux frequently have to restore MBR's
costing both time and knowledge.

Getting lots of OSes running

[gcnaddict]

I know its possible to boot BSD, Vista, XP, and OSX if you use Grub->>Vista Bootloader->>NTLDR (to load bsd/osx, vista, and XP respectively). However, knowing that I can skip grub (no offense. I just didn't feel comfortable using it) is great news!

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[Penguin Follower]

You're not alone! I still use LILO because it's what I've used since 1997, and I'm too lazy to learn GRUB.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[nine-times]

What's wrong with GRUB? I'm not offended by you not liking it, but just curious. To me, it doesn't exactly seem perfect and ideal, but it's easy enough to install and use.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[TheRaven64]

To me, GRUB seems like insane bloatware. Why do I need something that's so big it needs its own partition just to handle multiboot? The FreeBSD first-stage boot loader is small enough to fit in the MBR. It presents me with a menu of all partitions to boot from (although it does label NTFS partitions as DOS) so I get something a bit like this at boot:

F1: FreeBSD
F2: DOS

F5: Disk 2

Default: F1

It defaults to whatever I booted last time. If I nuke all of the partitions on my disk and re-install, it still works, passing off to the OS-specific boot loaders on each partition. It's lightweight, simple, well-tested, and does what I need.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[The MAZZTer]

Actually, EasyBCD requires Grub to be installed in order to boot Linux.

Now my problem is, it doesn't want to know what DRIVE I've installed Grub on... so I am doubtful it will work. :/

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[The MAZZTer]

Aha, you have to go edit the Linux entry and set the drive letter (EasyBCD automatically converts it to the device name).

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Grub isn't very difficult to adjust to. I also held out on learning it for a while, but it actually is kinda nice. The thing I really like about it is after making a change (new kernel, boot option, etc) it isn't necessary to reinstall it to the mbr. Just edit menu.lst and it's done.

Take the 5 minutes to learn it.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[isecore]

me too!

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[bersl2]

Ditto here. Except I finally switched a while ago.

The GRUB command line is very, very useful.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[The MAZZTer]

Doh, wait, it should remain C:. EasyBCD uses some voodoo and places a file on C: to boot Linux. I can't wait to see the voodoo that magically figures out what partition grub is loaded on.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[misleb]

You're not alone! I still use LILO because it's what I've used since 1997, and I'm too lazy to learn GRUB.

LILO can be very finicky and a system can easily become unbootable given bad parameters. An interactive boot shell that is filesystem aware (GRUB) can come in very handy. It is almost like having a real system firmware. Although if LILO works fine, there is probalby no reason to bother switching to GRUB. I mean, how often do you fiddle with boot parameters anyway?

-matthew

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[SomeGuyTyping]

I haven't figured out how to make a pretty boot splash page for grub, so I still use lilo to boot my XP/Ubuntu box.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[FST777]

Now where did you get that screenshot from my bootloader?

I installed Vista on my second drive (or rather, I swapped drives for the install and swapped them back afterwards. Stupid installer.) and I use the FreeBSD 1st stage loader for selection. I previously used GAG, which I still love. The secondary partition on the first drive is FAT32 with FreeDOS (for when I need DOS) mainly used for sharing files between the OSses.

I really fail to see why I would need something like GRUB or BCD when I have this or GAG as alternatives.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[TeknoHog]

When you "make install" a new Linux kernel, it makes a symlink /boot/vmlinuz to the new kernel. So you won't even have to edit menu.lst if the boot option is this symlink. Grub also has the nice feature of editing the kernel entry at bootup, so you can go back to the old kernel if necessary.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[entrylevel]

Grub doesn't need an extra parition to boot from. I'm noting that you said the 1st stage BSD bootloader. That would imply that, just like Linux, there is a 2nd stage to the boot loading. The 1st stage of grub fits in the MBR without issue. The 2nd stage is read from your boot partition, which in most modern distros is the same as your root partition. It also happens that is a handy place to put the bootloader config in human-readable form. You might call that bloat, but I call it handy for stuff like single user mode or testing a new kernel without worrying about needing a boot floppy.

The "last selected OS" is handy, and GRUB can be configured to do this as well, but what if you last selected single user mode, or memtest86? If you reboot your machine remotely, and forget that the last option selected has no network support, you have no way to access the machine. At least with GRUB, you can edit the config and tell it not to do that.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[rapidweather]

This box that I am on right now is a dual 200 MMX with 256 MB of RAM, and three hard drives.
I use Windows 98 "DOS" to make batch files to run loadlin with a nice menu to boot either Windows 98 (not very often), or a selection of window managers in my knoppix remaster (see screenshots). I can use a "knoppix.img" file for ~/, or just do without that, and boot into the default IceWM. Next choice is Fluxbox, then KDE, then twm.
The Windows 98 desktop has icons for all of that also, and the menu too. So, can jump from Windows 98 back to the menu, and on to linux. Additional menu items are scandisk for '98 partition, MSDOS Edit, allowing a fix of any of the batch files. (mostly used to set the system up). So, I do not have to use the knoppix CD to boot, I just turn the box on.
Oh, wait! I do get GRUB, with a choice of RHL 9 or Windows 98, that times out to '98, which brings the menu up via autoexec.bat right away. So, I can get into '98 either via GRUB, or wait till the menu appears, and choose '98 there.
I have had boxes with system commander, and a bunch of OS's, '98, SuSE, Debian, Slackware, etc. and used the MSDOS menu on '98 there to get into something like knoppix.
I look forward to the day when I can try Vista, and see if I can add a HDD, and put linux on it, and let Vista dual boot it, using some sort of third party software. That would be cool. Right now, I can run my knoppix remaster on an XP box, usually with a generous "knoppix.img" for ~/. Also I use emelFM to look in all the partitions to see what's there. Usually wind up playing all the songs that were downloaded using XP.

-- Rapidweather

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[drinkypoo]

You're not alone! I still use LILO because it's what I've used since 1997, and I'm too lazy to learn GRUB.

grub has one really great feature that got me to switch, besides the fact that just about every linux distribution uses grub now: you can edit the commandline from the boot screen. Just hit "e" and you end up in a readline-equipped editor that allows you to, for example, change your root device, or add "single" to the command line.

grub also supports booting from more media than lilo does, so I prefer it just from the standpoint that I don't have to learn a new tool if I someday want to use that functionality.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[644bd346996]

I'm pretty sure GRUB doesn't require its own partition for anything, even when you are using BSD disklabels. The stage1 goes in the MBR, the stage1_5 filesystem driver goes in the slack space after the MBR, and the full stage 2 image goes in a directory on a filesystem. If you are putting GRUB on a floppy or a partition of its own, you don't need a stage1_5. Once the stage 2 is loaded, you have the full functionality of grub accessible and it will proceed to look for the config file, if that is the way you set it up. If it is not set up to look for a config file, you get the powerful command line from which you can either directly load most free operating systems, or you can chainload any other PC OS you have installed. Sure, it is more than 448 bytes, but it is far from bloated. I have used almost all of its fuctionality in the course of running various operating systems, and there was no situation that GRUB couldn't handle.

By the way, the BSD bootloader does not fit in the MBR, either. Just the first stage, which is just a boot manager that loads other bootloaders. It really is not much better than anything else - it just gives you that very basic menu, after which you almost certainly get another menu. Actually booting FreeBSD still uses three stages.

Re:Getting lots of OSes running

[The_Dougster]

On my latest and greatest system that I just put together, I installed GRUB onto a USB Key drive before I got to work. That was an interesting challenge, but pretty neat after I got it sorted out. Now I can re-do the MBR anytime just by booting with the USB Key plugged in.

On the topic here, why not just let Vista do whatever it wants, then stick in some old hard drive for drive 1 with your bootable OS's and GRUB installed. To boot Vista just "map (hd1) (hd0); map (hd0) (hd1); rootnoverify (hd1,0); chainloader (hd1,0)+1; boot"

I boot my Windows partition now from the 2nd hard drive just like this.

BCD

[Kinthelt]

Why would I want to boot up to Binary Coded Decimals? So terribly inefficient.

Re:BCD

[drinkypoo]

From your link: "Binary-coded decimal (BCD) is, after character encodings, the most common way of encoding decimal digits in computing and in electronic systems." It's not an IBM thing. BCD is one of the first things they tought me in x86 assembler class. Too bad I forgot it. Good thing I kept my textbook.

Re:BCD

[Bill Dog]

Look again at the very first post here. It is you who didn't get the joke.

2 OS's running simultaneously

[Salvance]

I don't see what's so impressive about Vista's bootloader, unless you're simply comparing it to prior MS versions. What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment. Imagine being able to switch back and forth between Linux and Windows simply by hitting a keystroke?

With the advent of dual core chips and O/S support for these chips, this doesn't seem all that difficult. Isn't Apple already doing it?

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[l4m3z0r]

What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment.

How is this possible without virtualization of some kind be it hardware or software? Oh wait its not...

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Imagine being able to switch back and forth between Linux and Windows simply by hitting a keystroke?

You mean like with this? no wait, Vista's EULA won't let you do that unless you buy the pricier Vista...

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[Daniel_Staal]

Nope, Apple isn't doing it, and neither is anyone else. And they won't, not like you are describing, and here's why: Someone needs to be in charge of the memory, the disks, and all the rest. That's the whole point of the OS. Therefore, only one OS can run on a computer at a time.

You could get around that with some fancy firmware to save the state to some storage device and load it up again, but it really isn't worth it. Virtualization does a better job for most of what you would want to do: Have a base OS, and run programs on top of it that pretend to be the hardware to other OS's. Done well, you don't loose much speed, and all the programs can run at once.

And if you want full speed, just dual-boot. It's a lot simpler than the setup you describe, and the only disadvantage is that you can't leave things 'suspended' in mid-run.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[nine-times]

Running multiple OSes simultaneously without virtualization or emulation? Where/how is Apple doing this?

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[TheRaven64]

Someone needs to be in charge of the memory, the disks, and all the rest. That's the whole point of the OS. Therefore, only one OS can run on a computer at a time.

Or the hypervisor in many mainframes, IBM POWER5 systems, or anything running Xen. The next generation of GPUs are going to include save and restore state operations, and newer x86 systems finally come with an IOMMU, meaning that a Hypervisor will soon be able to share everything, including the GPU, between machines.

The DirectX 10 driver model in Vista supports this kind of GPU sharing, by the way.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[Anonymous Coward]

the only disadvantage is that you can't leave things 'suspended' in mid-run.

Unless you hibernate between switches.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[IntergalacticWalrus]

With the advent of dual core chips and O/S support for these chips, this doesn't seem all that difficult. Isn't Apple already doing it?

Dual-core chips have absolutely nothing to do with the ridiculous "multiple OS without virtualization" scenario you are imagining. Yes, it really is "all that difficult", actually more in the line with "impossible".

And no, Apple isn't doing it. Apple hasn't even stepped a foot in the virtualization bandwagon yet, so I'm wondering where you got that idea. Boot Camp is just a fancy dual boot solution.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[HTH NE1]

He's probably thinking of Rosetta and/or X11, or before that Classic for running Mac OS 9 and earlier apps under Mac OS X.

Hmm, I wonder if an Intel Mac could be coaxed into running Mac OS 9 under Classic under Rosetta, and if so whether you could run 68k binaries in it.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[Anonymous Coward]

They used to do this with their DOS Compatibility Card. Two different chip families, yes, but it is the same principle, isn't it.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[i7dude]

i dont have to imagine it...i have a kvm switch.

dude.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[microbee]

Get two computers and share a monitor.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fuck moded the parent up?

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[Salvance]

Impossible seems like a pretty strong word to use here. You're saying that a computer with 2 hard drives (and 2 hard drive controllers) couldn't share a single CPU? You might also need to add 2 sets of memory banks, but given the cheap price this doesn't seem unreasonable.

I realize many people would probably rather just have a KVM and two computers ... but what do you do if you're a developer with a laptop? I'd pay quite a premium for a computer that could run 2 O/S's simulataneously ... even if it was technically 2 computers in one enclosure.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[iluvcapra]

Hmm, I wonder if an Intel Mac could be coaxed into running Mac OS 9 under Classic under Rosetta, and if so whether you could run 68k binaries in it.

It can't and it doesn't. See Apple's Universal Binaries reader (a pdf). If you're a developer, it's time to recompile; fortunately Carbon isn't going anywhere.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[mightybaldking]

That's how I do it!

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment. Imagine being able to switch back and forth between Linux and Windows simply by hitting a keystroke?

Personally, I'd rather this was done via virtualization. Virtualization allows you to use the most secure OS as the host OS with only it having access to damage the critical parts of your system. The guest OS's can run on top of it and benefit from the increased security and better ability to run incremental backups, restore from a known good state, and suspend without a reboot.

I do switch between OS's I'm using right now, with a simple key press and I sometimes run with one OS displayed on one monitor and one on another. Using a VM allows me to have both of them simultaneously accessing the same files and lets me copy and paste between them. The disadvantages are that it is not quite as fast as running them alone and the hosted OS's can't use the full capabilities of the graphics cards. Given the hardware virtualization built into newer chips and the progress several parties are making towards letting the hosted OS's use the 3-d graphics, I'm pretty pleased with that solution.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[uufnord]

simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment

If by "non-virtualized", you mean paravirtualizaed, then I'd recommend you take a look at the Xen demo CDs. Outside that, I'm not sure what you mean. What is Apple already doing?

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[snuf23]

"He's probably thinking of Rosetta and/or X11, or before that Classic for running Mac OS 9 and earlier apps under Mac OS X."

None of which represent running "2 OSs at the same time without virtualization".

Rosetta: a PowerPC emulation layer for running PowerPC binaries on Intel. I don't know the details but I would assume that system calls to Mac OS X APIs are presented to the native Intel OS X components - so the whole thing isn't exactly running in the emulation layer. The OS components being called by the software are running native on Intel.

X11: A window manager for UNIX. X11 apps running on Mac OS X are still binaries built to run on OS X. The Window manager just handles displaying the GUI elements. This is not running a different OS.

Classic mode: A form of virtualization. It booted OS 9 in a seperate process under OS X. Similar to how VMWare or Virtual PC work. Probably a bit better in terms of hardware support, because Apple had fixed targets for possible hardware on Apple computers, rather than VMWare which for some devices (video cards) only offers basic support.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[Anonymous Coward]

Unisys sells 'em. It's called CMP and uses hardware partitioning to permit what is effectively a buttload of servers in a single box to function as multiple individual servers. This is a hardware trick and only functions because redundant hardware exists to facilitate the functionality.

Multiple OSes certainly cannot share any of the same hardware. OSes function with and expect full control over that hardware. The only solution is a hypervisor, effectively a mini host OS which is loaded as the kernel of the system and then proceeds to load guest OSes. Those OSes would be loaded into protected memory and the hypervisor would emulate the hardware interface to the point of supporting the functions of that OS. The hypervisor would have to be largely complete, including virtual memory and CPU abstraction, to permit both OSes to allocate their memory or schedule their threads arbitrarily. In order for hardware to function decently you'd need driver support both in the hypervisor OS and in the guest OSes, but it would still be significantly slower due to the resource management that would be required to permit both OSes to share the devices.

In effect you're looking for VMWare Infrastructure 3, an enterprise class piece of software which is an extensive hypervisor implementation. Only specific hardware is supported, with drivers offered from VMWare. It's intended specifically for server purposes and would function terribly for a desktop OS. In effect, you want something which cannot exist. Even as hardware catches up, the software to exploit that hardware also catches up. You'd need a high class machine to run OSes from over a decade ago.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[soft_guy]

Hmm, I wonder if an Intel Mac could be coaxed into running Mac OS 9 under Classic under Rosetta, and if so whether you could run 68k binaries in it.

No, you cannot run Classic under Rosetta. Classic is not just an application running an emulator. It directly hooks into the core OS and touches hardware.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[entrylevel]

The OS manages access to your hardware. Without signifigant modifications to the hardware (hardware hypervisor), or a virtualization layer sitting between the hardware and multiple operating systems, it is currently impossible to boot two operating systems at the same time on the same CPU (or even multiple CPUs.)

Currently, all operating systems expect that they have complete access to hardware, so running 2 or more at the same time requires modifying the operating systems themselves (Xen), or incurring a signifigant performance hit to run un-modified operating systems (VMware.)

This is, of course, a vast over-simplification, but I hope it makes this a bit more clear.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[snuf23]

Yes you could do it. You would need:

2 processors
2 hard drives
2 sets of memory
2 motherboard chipsets
2 video cards
2 bioses
etc.

A physical switch that toggled between them. Basically two computers with a hardware toggle between them (just like an integrated KVM).

Now why can't you do it with one set? Because at some point something has to arbitrate between what gets access to the hardware at what time. And this is where virtualization comes in. Virtualization technology such as VMWare ESX server provides a small footprint custom OS that serves the purpose of arbitrater for access to the hardware between the different virtual machines. It's just there to run virtual machines and make sure that they don't fight over hardware resources. This approach is much faster than booting Windows and running a virtual machine on top of that OS. Performance is much better. I believe Xen works in a similar manner. CPUs from Intel and AMD are starting to support virtualization inherently (to various degrees) making it a more practical solution in the x86 world.
This is actually old tech idea from mainframes finally becoming practical on commodity PC parts. I would suggest reading up on hypervisors for more information on how this works. Basically a hypervisor is a lightweight broker for system resources that sits between the multiple running operating systems and the underlying hardware. Without a broker like this the only option for your two operating system on one computer would be essentially two computers with a hardware toggle in one box. It just wouldn't work any other way barring some highly weird custom hardware that doesn't exist.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I'd be willing to bet you the op is thinking of Parallels running inside OSX. I have this and use it all the time, and yes I can see where if I was running it full screen in windows that it could confuse someone who doesn't understand virtualization and OS's. Esp. since I tend to run it full screen on a second monitor. ;)

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[whoop]

It's possible already! I just found out about this new technology called, "Two Computers." Apparently, it allows you to do tasks in two entirely separate environments, running any OS you choose. And best of all, none of that virtualizationizing hoopla crap! It's just a bunch of marketing hype if you ask me.

Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[scribblej]

What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment

They're going to get to that; right now R&D is tied up trying to find a way to factor large prime numbers.

Slashdoted

[logik3x]

3 coments and already slashdoted... for once I was interested by a story...

Re:Slashdoted

[neersign]

already slashdoted

microsoft overwrote it...

Despite the marketing speak...

[goofyheadedpunk]

> It (BCD) is one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence...

I'm curious if this statement is more than marketing speak. What's so great about BCD?

Re:Despite the marketing speak...

[lixee]

I'm curious if this statement is more than marketing speak. What's so great about BCD?

I'm afraid you misunderstood the statement. They're talking about Vista's boot script not BCD. I fail to see what's so great about it though, since it overwrites the MBR "without a second thought".

Re:Despite the marketing speak...

[Qubit]

It's the Biggest Common Denominator?

(I dunno... what is BCD supposed to mean, anyhow? -- article is /.ed)

Re:Despite the marketing speak...

[Dolly_Llama]

Well it makes it easy to visually convert binary into decimal

0001 0011 0011 0111

Why BCD?

[Ash-Fox]

So... any particular reason why BCD instead of GRUB or Lilo? I don't get it.

Re:Why BCD?

[Ash-Fox]

Nevermind, ignore my previous comment. I miss understood what EasyBCD was from the article.

Well?

[gigne]

It's one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence

Does it surpass GRUB in features? Surely if you are going to boot into multiple OS's GRUB is the better choice?

Re:Well?

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess would be no, the submitter just said that out of ignorance of boot loaders (which is apparent from the "boot script" wording). The simple fact that it is not open source is a significant blow against it and will guarantee that i will not use it as the primary boot mechanism for any computers I ever get that come with Vista. Who knows what it is doing in the time from when you select "Linux" to when it passes control to the Linux kernel.

Except for the fact that...

[daveschroeder]

...you can't "boot OS X" on non-Apple hardware without:

1. Breaking Apple's Mac OS X license agreement, which says that Mac OS X is to be run only on Apple-branded computers
2. Pirating Mac OS X (Intel), since Mac OS X (Intel) is not available as a standalone OS at present
3. Running a horribly hacked version of Mac OS X, with critical pieces of the system modified, including the kernel
4. Running Mac OS X in an unupdateable state, since any official Apple software updates that overwrite modified pieces of the hacked version of Mac OS X will break it
5. Running Mac OS X in a state completely unsupported by its vendor
6. Possibly violating civil or criminal law in your jurisdiction

I hope that most people can find at least *one* of the above items that would make them reconsider running Mac OS X (Intel) on a generic PC without paying for it (some will no doubt argue that they should be able to "reuse" PowerPC licenses for Mac OS X in spirit, but the fact is that it's not the same product - that's like saying that you at one time owned one software product from a company that's similar, so you should be able to use this other one/newer version/older version/different version for free). I'm sure others will come up with all sorts of justifications why it's okay.

But isn't all of the billions of dollars or R&D and hundreds of thousands of manhours invested in Mac OS X worth something? What if their pricing is predicated on what is essentially a good faith agreement that you'll not hack it and run it on non-Apple hardware? Does Apple have ANY say in how they'd prefer it to be used?

I could go on, of course, but just thought this was worth mentioning.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep repeating the same stuff over and over again. Here's the real list

1. Breaking the law
2. Having an install which might not work right

Re:Except for the fact that...

[daveschroeder]

No

So, when someone puts a lot of money, time, or effort into something, and then chooses to allow you to use it for a fee, you basically have no respect for their wishes, under any circumstances?

Cool.

Just making sure we have that right.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you install Vista and Linux on your new Intel-based Mac and would still like to boot into OS X sometimes?

Re:Except for the fact that...

[TheGreek]

What if you install Vista and Linux on your new Intel-based Mac and would still like to boot into OS X sometimes?

You can do that already, skipper.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[daveschroeder]

What if you install Vista and Linux on your new Intel-based Mac and would still like to boot into OS X sometimes?

Um, you can do just that, then?

...

(What are you trying to ask? Because Boot Camp will officially support Vista, and you'll legally be able to purchase and install Vista on an Intel-based Mac, and you can of course install Linux (yes, the final version of Boot Camp will very likely support more than two partitions and thus more than two OSes), and Mac OS X is obviously a supported OS on an Intel-based Mac.)

If, on the other hand, you're one of these people who uses ridiculous sophistry (like saying you primarily use Windows/Linux or some other OS that's not Mac OS X on your new Intel-based Mac, and therefore you should be able to reuse that license on a non-Apple PC), I'd just say that's pretty much bullshit, because if you had an Intel-based Mac, you'd just run Mac OS X on that, instead of using an ugly, ugly hack to shoehorn it into running on non-Apple hardware. Yeah, yeah, I know, "What if I have a non-Apple laptop and really want to take Mac OS X with me?" Sure, just keep making things up. I'll tell you what: why don't you find a person who is actually trying to stay legal by doing this imaginary scenario instead of continually bringing this up as a justification?

You also forget that it's still against Mac OS X's license agreement, and may be in violation of various laws in various nations or jurisdictions. I'm sure some will just say "screw the license agreement" and "I think the laws are wrong"; that's fine. That's your choice.

Also, one other point: if you're jumping through all of these hoops to justify running Mac OS X without "pirating" it (i.e., what if you wanted to use the license from an Intel-based Mac), it's only the license agreement that is keeping you from running it on more than one machine in the first place. So, by that logic, you should be able to buy one copy of anything, and run it on an unlimited number of machines, correct?

Or is this one of those things where people think they get to personally decide what principles of law, contractual agreements, purchasing, copyright, and so on that they will follow, and which others they choose to ignore?

Re:Except for the fact that...

[Rakishi]

What exactly IS your point? You've got your head so far Apple's backside you can't even write a coherent argument.

You state that OS X on non-apple hardware is neither stable nor production quality. Legality in terms of licenses is of little importance for personal use and no sane company would use such an unstable product so your "points" are redundant. As a result it is only viable for those individuals who either lack money or wish to play around with OS X, neither of whom is going to buy a Mac instead.

So instead of letting them see how OS X is, and potentially get hooked enough to buy a mac later (to have a stable and production quality version) you want them to simply never use OS X period? Yeah, I hope you never go run a company.

Of course this assumes the validity of your claims that it is not viable for everyday productive use due to lack of updates and stability.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[Sir Homer]

You don't have to respect all their wishes. What happened to fair use?

Re:Except for the fact that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I could go on, of course, but just thought this was worth mentioning.

Dude! Calm down!
You're talking to like three people at most, and I'm not one of them.
Really, who would want to do that anyway?
  geeez...
 
[/trollbait]

Re:Except for the fact that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you could install Vista on Apple hardware and boot OS X on it perfectly legaly. (what for? just because it's there!)

Re:Except for the fact that...

[Anonymous Coward]

How does it smell in Steve Job's asshole?

Re:Except for the fact that...

[daveschroeder]

What exactly was incoherent or incorrect about my argument? Specific examples, please.

Your arguments are the ones that are irrelevant, here. You don't get to decide that using Mac OS X in this fashion benefits Apple, therefore it's okay in the context your own moral or logical framework for people to pirate it and so on. Apple is the entity that gets to decide, and they have.

It doesn't have anything to do with having anything in anyone's backside.

Again, I'd love to hear about anything that I said that's incorrect...this isn't about whether or not I want (or don't want) people to get "hooked" on Macs, nor about whether business/corporate environments would use OS X in this fashion (they obviously wouldn't). The bottom line is that nothing you've said negates any of my (correct) points about using OS X on non-Apple hardware.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[joe 155]

bad arguement, you make very similar points a lot trying to make them seem new or different. You also ignore fair use, and why we've been getting so annoyed about DRM. If I buy an apple computer that comes with OSX why shouldn't I be able to put that on a different computer is, say, my apple dies? I've paid to use that software on one computer and that's what I'll do... a lot of this other stuff that you mention are just symptoms of this broken system of no fair use - illegal to use software that I've paid for, never.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[Ender Ryan]

Z0MG OH NOES!!!

Sheesh... get a fucking life Dave. Anyone with as much emotional investment in any company as you seem to have in Apple has some sort of serious emotional problems.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[daveschroeder]

So, are you saying that there was anything incorrect in my post, or...?

Or, that this isn't relevant given the fact that the title and summary of this article makes it appear that you can just boot "OS X" on non-Apple hardware, when that isn't anything close to even being the case, and the only way you can use OS X on non-Apple hardware is still with the hacks that have existed ever since Mac OS X has been out on Intel, and will continue to exist indefinitely?

Re:Except for the fact that...

[HTH NE1]

...you can't "boot OS X" on non-Apple hardware without:

1. Breaking Apple's Mac OS X license agreement, which says that Mac OS X is to be run only on Apple-branded computers

Contact your local cattle rancher?

2. Pirating Mac OS X (Intel), since Mac OS X (Intel) is not available as a standalone OS at present

Who says you need to buy it as a standalone OS to possess an install disk? Wanting to install Mac OS X on a PC does not preclude ownership of an Intel-based Mac. You can even balance out the seats by uninstalling the Mac's preinstallation and run something else instead on the Mac hardware.

It is also possible to possess legitimate beta install disks.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[ettlz]

But isn't all of the billions of dollars or R&D and hundreds of thousands of manhours invested in Mac OS X worth something?

What about all the manhours the FreeBSD and OpenBSD engineers put into their product, so their code could be co-opted by others (like, ooh! Apple) and sold on with restrictive terms? What about all the manhours Red Hat and SuSE and the Debian project and Ubuntu and many others into a whole host of free Linux distros? Aren't they worth something, or does it have to come attached to white LEDs and have labels set in Frutiger?

What if their pricing is predicated on what is essentially a good faith agreement that you'll not hack it and run it on non-Apple hardware?

Well that's their fault, innit? "Good faith agreement"! Whatever next.

Does Apple have ANY say in how they'd prefer it to be used?

I think about as much say as the BSD folks claim. Or that the GPL folks do, for that matter.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[Rakishi]

You don't get to decide that using Mac OS X in this fashion benefits Apple, therefore it's okay in the context your own moral or logical framework for people to pirate it and so on.

Sure you do, assuming that is your moral or ethical system. Heck that is the definition of what is being done as someone is perfectly free to decide whatever they want to be moral or ethical. The trick comes in convincing other people of that and dealing with any consequences if it doesn't agree with societies morals/ethics/laws. It should be noted that what a company desires need not be either legal or ethical (by most standards) so again you can't simply use what a company says. Heck, the law need not be ethical or moral either.

Apple is the entity that gets to decide, and they have.

No, Apple has no choice but to decide this way as any other choice allows for commercial use of (or high possibility of) OS X on non-apple hardware. Whether or not they really mind the personal use of OS X on non-apple platforms (for say experimentation, testing, playing around, etc.) is unknown and must be unknown for legal reasons.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[WillAdams]

Here's one example of a machine the argument about running Mac OS X might make sense on:

http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/PrdBrid ge.jsp?pclass=ST5000

Unfortunately, Apple still hasn't made good on their promise that discontinuing the Newton would result in interesting hardware to replace it.

William
(who wrote out this post on his Stylistic using RitePen)

Re:Except for the fact that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that Apple will care, just as long as you:

Understand that if it breaks, it's not Apple's fault
Understand that if it breaks your computer, it's not Apple's fault
Understand that if Apple changes something that breaks your changes, it's not Apple's fault
Understand that it is in no way in Apple's best interests to support you, work with you or give you the time of day.
Understand that if software that works with OSX doesn't work on your system, it's not Apple's fault. Neither is it the fault of the original software vendor. They don't have any reason to support you, either.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[soft_guy]

Pretty much, yeah. If you're a control nazi, don't release your shit. Fuck corporations like Apple who wanna fuck the consumers up the ass sans lube.

Apple doesn't exactly try to get people thrown in jail for doing this. Sure, they frown on people who distribute hacked versions of their OS. But, I think they are right to do that merely from the point of view that they are protecting less savvy people from fucking themselves and also making it really clear that running OS X in that manner is unsupported and therefore unwise if you are doing any work that might actually be important. But frankly, I've spoken with lots of people from Apple on the subject (admittedly they are not from Apple Legal and are not speaking officially) and they pretty all say that if you want to hack something for the sheer fun of trying to get it to work and aren't redistributing their stuff, then knock yourself out.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[snuf23]

"I think about as much say as the BSD folks claim. Or that the GPL folks do, for that matter."

I hate to support the Apple ranting guy BUT you are missing the point. People who release code under the BSD or GPL licenses give up certain rights deliberately. They could have released it as proprietary code initially but they CHOSE to release it licensed as GPL or BSD. Anyone who willfully releases code under the BSD license and then bitches about it's usage (lawful per the text of the license) is a moron. If you want your code to not be used in that manner you don't release it under the BSD license.
People do release code under the BSD license to allow it's usage in proprietary systems. They don't want their own usage of the code to be limited by the terms of something like the GPL.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[snuf23]

Wouldn't you need driver software to make the touch sensitivity work properly under OSX?

Re:Except for the fact that...

[snuf23]

"Also, one other point: if you're jumping through all of these hoops to justify running Mac OS X without "pirating" it"

Arrrrrrrrrrrr! If yer going ta go through the trouble o running it illegally, yar might as well be a pirate when ya do it.
Helps to stop the global warming!

So, by that logic, you should be able to buy one copy of anything, and run it on an unlimited number of machines, correct?

A lot of people do feel that way. Or rather they don't care or consider it a "moral" decision. They don't really understand software law, they sure as hell don't read the shrinkwrap or clickwrapped software license.
With OSX nothing stops you from installing it on every Mac on planet Earth. OSX upgrades get pirated a lot - as far as I can tell there isn't any difference between the "family pack" and the single user copy except the price and the packaging.
Do you think Apple really cares all that much if someone installs their family pack on 6 computers instead of 5? I don't think they do. They make the majority of the their profit off of hardware (the iPod more than anything) and are willing to release OSX updates in a non-serialized, non-copy protected state because it isn't worth annoying their user base (and most likely increase their support calls). Contrast this from Microsoft which makes their profit off of their software (serial numbers, activation, Windows genuine advantage, 7 different versions of Vista each more expensive).
We buy our OSX upgrades for our office computers but do you think Steve Jobs loses sleep because someone borrowed a Tiger install disk to use on their home iMac?

Re:Except for the fact that...

[drsmithy]

If, on the other hand, you're one of these people who uses ridiculous sophistry (like saying you primarily use Windows/Linux or some other OS that's not Mac OS X on your new Intel-based Mac, and therefore you should be able to reuse that license on a non-Apple PC), I'd just say that's pretty much bullshit, because if you had an Intel-based Mac, you'd just run Mac OS X on that, instead of using an ugly, ugly hack to shoehorn it into running on non-Apple hardware.

I can think of at least one reason why this argument is perfectly valid - you want better value for money by using OS X on hardware that doesn't fit into one of Apple's 3 market niches.

Yeah, yeah, I know, "What if I have a non-Apple laptop and really want to take Mac OS X with me?" Sure, just keep making things up. I'll tell you what: why don't you find a person who is actually trying to stay legal by doing this imaginary scenario instead of continually bringing this up as a justification?

I can't see any reason why installing a copy of OS X you legally own, that you aren't running on your Mac, should be considered at all morally or ethically wrong. I have an Intel Mac Mini running Windows MCE for my HTPC. Hence, I have a "spare" OS X license that is not being used. Why should feel even the slightest twinge of guilt at installing a hacked up copy onto a clone PC ?

(Not that I have any great interest in doing so for other reasons, but that's besides the point - and I doubt I can even legally sell my unused copy of OS X to someone.)

Re:Except for the fact that...

[WillAdams]

Most Tablet PC systems use Wacom digitizers through a serial connection (a few use FinePoint digitizers). There's an opensource program, TabletMagic to support such (I use it for an old ArtPad), and the source code for NeXT's Wacom tablet driver is available (I use it for an old ArtZ). I think a digitizer driver is an easily solved problem.

Licensing seems much thornier --- it saddens me Apple won't sell me a software upgrade to the copy of OpenStep 4.2 I bought from them.

William

Re:Except for the fact that...

[Nermal6693]

Mac OS X (Intel) is not available as a standalone OS at present

The retail boxed version of 10.4.7 Server is Intel-compatible.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[bandmassa]

It would be legal if you installed Vista on a Mac then used EasyBCD to install and run MacOS X, but most people who have legitimate Apple hardware who have need for Doze are already served by Bootcamp (2nd rate, 1990s solution yes) or Parallels (dearer, but probably more reliable than the EasyBCD approach.) Frankly, I don't see too many people really "needing" multiple OSes. Sure some will, but until somebody manages to legally "Pandora" Doze or MacOS into a reverse-engineered open-source state, there are very few instances where you'd need much more than Mac OS, Office Mac and for those rare occassions, if you really MUST, Bootcamp.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[John Nowak]

You're not a moron if you release code under a BSD license and complain about how it is being used by some entity. It is both logical and reasonable to release under a BSD license for certain reasons while also hoping for contributions back. You may not want to restrict everyone with the GPL, but at the same time, you might hope Company Foo that said they'd contribute back actually does it.

Re:Except for the fact that...

[daveschroeder]

Fully aware of that, thanks, considering I talked about it[1] in my session at WWDC.

I'm not talking about the product "Mac OS X Server". I'm talking about "Mac OS X". (And yes, for those who immediately want to pounce and say "They're the same thing, you moron!" I'm intimately familiar with Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server, what they are, and the differences between them. The point is that people seem to go out of their way to justify using Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware when Apple forbids it in the license agreement, and laws in your jurisdiction may expressly prohibit it (either via copyright, DMCA-type circumvention, etc.). For everything I list, someone says "What if I go out and buy a Mac mini and then decide I don't want to use OS X on it any more and then want to 'reuse' that OS X license on my Gateway laptop?" or "Mac OS X Server 10.4.7 retail is Intel-compatible" or "I don't agree with Apple or any legal framework that might prohibit me from doing this, so I'm going to do it anyway, and further, I think it's GOOD for Apple, so I'm going to universally decide that it's okay to do." I mean, is a retail copy of Mac OS X not being available really the only barrier that you think exists to using Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware? It's STILL equally prohibited by the EULA; the EULA is the only thing stopping you from just outright pirating Mac OS X in the first place, and since you disagree with it, why buy it at all? Or is it because you think buying a copy of it is indeed moral, but then after that any other aspect of the EULA can be selectively ignored because you think it's "wrong"? What happens if people think being required to buy it is "wrong", en masse?)

Of course, whemn Leopard ships, you'll also be able to buy standalone retail copies of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server that run on Intel.

However, even then, all of my other points still stand, and that's why I said "at present". You may not *agree* with they other points, but they're still valid and correct. Since no business/corporate/institutional customer would buy Mac OS X and use it in this way for a wide, wide variety of reasons, it's going to continue to be relegated to the hacker/hobbyist community, who will either still pirate it, or actually buy a retail copy of Mac OS X because they thing it's the "right" thing to do.

Also, it's not any "10.4.7 Server" that is Intel-compatible; it has its own, separate part number, and is technically referred to as "Mac OS X Server 10.4.7 (Universal). (Mac OS X Server (PowerPC) was still available and orderable for a time from retailers.)

[1] Not actually mentioned in the slides; but brought up during the course of the session.

The award goes to...

[andreyw]

The real props should go to Microsoft for designing a flexible bootmanager and boot-time-application framework that is flexible and firmware independent (x86 BIOS, IA32 EFI, IA64 EFI, x64 EFI).

Re:The award goes to...

[Anonymous Coward]

The award should be paid by Microsoft to all of its competitors for its continued anti-competitive thuggery, such as obliterating any alternate operating system's boot records.

Re:The award goes to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft have published some instructions for how to use BCD in other dual-boot / multi-boot scenerios over on the port25 web site
http://port25.technet.com/archive/2006/10/13/Using -Vista_2700_s-Boot-Manager-to-Boot-Linux-and-Dual- Booting-with-BitLocker-Protection-with-TPM-Support .aspx

Apple is SOOOO Gonna SUE THEM

[eno2001]

You're not supposed to be able to boot OS X. The very fact that these guys have gone ahead and enabled a way to boot multiple OSes as well as OS X puts them in completely illegal territory. Apple and the U.S. government established the anti-boot laws to keep people from booting OS X. This was for the protection of both the consumer and Microsoft. Now that people can boot OS X, it's a problem. So these people will be heavily sued by Apple, you can count on that.

Re:Apple is SOOOO Gonna SUE THEM

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Apple and the U.S. government established the anti-boot laws to keep people from booting OS X.

OS X checks the hardware while booting. This, as far as I know, does nothing to remove or bypass that check. Presumably, it may only be used to boot OS X if you are installing multiple OS's on a Mac or have applied other hacks to OS X. I don't see any likely lawsuits over this.

Re:Apple is SOOOO Gonna SUE THEM

[daveschroeder]

Um, they're not saying this makes you able to boot OS X as-is. You can boot the hacked version of OS X that runs on non-Apple hardware via a bootloader; so what?

Apple isn't going to sue anyone, because this doesn't enable, or more easily enable, any booting of Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware that wasn't already possible with the hacked versions of Mac OS X.

Of course, your incorrect post is modded up as "Insightful", while my post which actually discusses the factual issues surrounding booting Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware (which is one of the OSes mentioned in the title and summary of this story) is being modded down as "Offtopic" as we speak.

Re:Apple is SOOOO Gonna SUE THEM

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the most lame person on slashdot.

Expensive Boot Loader

[SumoRoti]

Vista to boot Linux, OSX, BSD? Great! But it looks like a very expensive boot loading issue ...? I hope to hear about a grub/lilo version for not-booting-and-erase Vista... -- Sumo Roti To generalize is to be an idiot. -- William Blake

License: Freeware

[Benanov]

Downloaded it just to check the license (yeah, I'm odd about this crap)

It's freeware. Sorta looks like a Creative Commons license, but basically it's just plain old freeware.

4. Restrictions. The license granted in Section 3 above is expressly made subject to and limited by the following restrictions:
a. You may distribute the Work only under the terms of this License, and You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) to, this License with every copy of the Work You distribute, and only with the permission of the Licensor & Original Author. You may not offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter or restrict the terms of this License or the recipients' exercise of the rights granted hereunder. You may not sublicense the Work. You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License and to the disclaimer of warranties. You may not distribute the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. The above applies to the Work as incorporated in a Collective Work, but this does not require the Collective Work apart from the Work itself to be made subject to the terms of this License. If You create a Collective Work, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Collective Work any credit as required by clause 4(c), as requested.
b. You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange of the Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing or otherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided there is no payment of any monetary compensation in connection with the exchange of copyrighted works.
c. If you distribute the Work, You must obtain permission from and let the Original Author know, You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (and/or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, and/or (ii) if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g. a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties; the title of the Work if supplied; and to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work. Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner.

Transcription Error: "reconfigure a thing"

[Anonymous Coward]

With our new release of EasyBCD 1.5, booting into Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD straight from the Vista bootloader without ever having to add a single line of code reconfigure a thing is but a touch away!

Looks like someone (or something) had a problem taking accurate dictation. I think by "reconfigure a thing" they meant "reconfiguring". And resultingly it could use some adjustment to punctuation as well.

So...

[Shawn is an Asshole]

You're expecting Vista to act differently than every other Windows version since at least 95? Every one of the damn things overwrite the MBR.

This is why on multiboot systems I install Grub into the partition rather than the MBR. This way you can keep the Windows MBR and just set the Linux partition as bootable and it works as it's supposed to.

Tinfoil too tight?

[Kadin2048]

Apple and the U.S. government established the anti-boot laws to keep people from booting OS X.

I'm sorry ... what?

Are you posting from the future, where the world has been decimated by killer iPods or something?

Re:Tinfoil too tight?

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Are you posting from the future, where the world has been decimated by killer iPods or something?

You mean iPod Killers? No wait, those will never exist.

Re:Tinfoil too tight?

[WilliamSChips]

Actually, I think the Killers are selling on iTunes, and he's actually referring to their new album or something.

Re:Tinfoil too tight?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's posting from the future where government is slightly bigger (measured both in revenue and power over the people) than it is today, where his scenario makes perfect sense.

How big do you think government can get before they turn their attention to "regulating" your right to decide what software runs on your computer?

Don't worry, my man, oppression is for your own good.

well... i will have to check this out later

[atarione]

since they maybe able to help me boot linux w/ vista's Bootloader but they can not save their webserver from collapsing under the weight of the slashdot masses. sooo... but without this ... u can still use GRUB or LILO right ?? in the same way as XP/Linux dual boot? I haven't tried it soo just wondering..

MS owns the MBR

[wardk]

you have no rights to the MBR

get vista, get owned

But can it boot OSes installed on SATA-RAID?

[c0d3h4x0r]

I'd love to easily run alternative OSes on my home PC alongside Windows XP, but I can't because my hard drive is a SATA-RAID array. I've been unable to find any straightforward way to get bootloaders (such as GRUB) or alternative OSes (such as Linux) to install on, address, and boot from an SATA-RAID array (aka "fakeRAID"). Some limited support is available in Linux using "dmraid", but apparently you have to be a command-line expert with significant Linux-Fu powers to set that up, and all it will allow you to do is boot up GRUB from a non-SATA-RAID drive and then use it to boot Windows from a SATA-RAID array. No distribution I've found appears to deal well (or at all) with installing Linux to and multi-booting Linux from an SATA-RAID array that already has Windows on it.

This is a huge impediment to people installing and using Linux on modern systems, as motherboard-based SATA-RAID is becoming increasingly common (especially in higher-end home/gaming PCs). The only workaround I've found is to install a spare non-RAID drive and make it bootable to Linux, and then go change the motherboard's BIOS to boot off that drive instead of the RAID array, which is a major PITA just to choose which OS you want to boot.

So my question is, does the Vista bootloader allow booting of non-Windows OSes off of the SATA-RAID array that Vista is installed on? Does EasyBCD really make it easy to host and boot multiple OSes off a single SATA-RAID array? If so, that opens up the door to more easily dual-booting Linux on modern systems.

Re:But can it boot OSes installed on SATA-RAID?

[hauer]

Some limited support is available in Linux using "dmraid", but apparently you have to be a command-line expert with significant Linux-Fu powers to set that up, and all it will allow you to do is boot up GRUB from a non-SATA-RAID drive and then use it to boot Windows from a SATA-RAID array.

Not to argue, but I am running a dual-boot system on a sata raid array, no extra drive in the business. Dmraid does it for you, there are straightforward HOWTOs. Indeed you won't find a gui to set this up, OTOH I do not see raided systems becoming that common, and even if it's true that raided, dual-boot systems are becoming common, I bet that for 99% of those who use such, compiling a linux kernel from the command line is not an issue.

Re:But can it boot OSes installed on SATA-RAID?

[the_greywolf]

NVRAID seems well-supported by current versions of the kernel. At least, that's my experience with my nForce 570 MCP.

Re:But can it boot OSes installed on SATA-RAID?

[Computer Guru]

Yes, it can.
It makes it all so very easy. Just put the drive letter in, and you're off!

Re:But can it boot OSes installed on SATA-RAID?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

I've installed a dual boot system with SuSE 10.0 and WinXP, using Grub, without much problems ... except for WinXP not being able to install to a SATA RAID (please insert floppy with drivers ... hahaha ... no floppy in my laptop, but can't choose to grab the drivers from a HD or a DVD or whatever ... talk about stupid ).

Anyway, I suspect you've run into a user error: maybe you're trying to do something a bit over your head ... I'd suspect installing only a Linux distro (probably all will work) on a clean SATA raid would present you with no problems at all. I didn't have to do anything special for SuSE 10.0.

Re:But can it boot OSes installed on SATA-RAID?

[c0d3h4x0r]

My problem is not user error, nor am I trying to do something over my head. Your PC's configuration just doesn't have Windows installed on the SATA-RAID like mine does. I installed Windows using the "Press F6 to install 3rd-party drivers" options during the text-based install, and provided the floppy with the SATA-RAID driver, and installed Windows onto the SATA-RAID array. I don't want to disrupt that installation or its ability to boot by installing Linux with GRUB onto a second partition on the same SATA-RAID array, but Linux and/or GRUB don't appear to currently support a way to do that.

Re:But can it boot OSes installed on SATA-RAID?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

I beg to differ. I only have the one sata-raid array, and it contains both the windows partition and the linux partition. I installed it with a custom made windows install CD on which I added the correct sata drivers.

Anyhow, you might try to check your bios. I've had a problem with a similar laptop where either windows or linux would barf on startup, because the sata-raid was either in IDE-emulation mode (linux wouldn't start) or in sata-raid (windows wouldn't start).

Vista Copies Open Source software again?

[LinuxDragon]

Can't this monopoly giant come up with it's own software anymore? Oh i'm sorry, they have yet to ever trully invent their own software, even dos was taken from a programmer in a garage. (Pirates of Silicone Valley). The Original OS of windows was actually the combined work on Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates, which Bill ran off with and beat poor Jobs and Mac to the patent. Now Windows takes it's aim at another group, Open Source. Will they ever stop? they have already copied the basic coding for KDE, and have emulated Gnome. What's next? what comes after copying Grub 1.5? I fear for the world when this beast of an operating system is released. This OS will surely be our undoing with massive lag spikes, BSOD's due to degrading code, lack of technichal support as Microsoft programmers join the ranks of the Google programmers... Good bye world!

Re:Vista Copies Open Source software again?

[B_un1t]

LOL Silicone Valley...I think Pirates of Silicone Valley was a porn flick...you're thinking of Pirates of Silicon Valley.

Re:Vista Copies Open Source software again?

[LinuxDragon]

Sorry, Not quite sure how to spell it, and i'm at work so asking around was just not an option...

IT manager i should know this stuff...

sad sad error.. (WINDOWS MADE ME DO IT!)

Re:Vista Copies Open Source software again?

[kbolino]

Neither, apparently, was fact-checking. The operating system, QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), which you implicitly mention, is itself based on CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers), and so the Seattle company that created it was not by any means original. And the original Windows code was entirely developed at Microsoft--if you mean concepts, then again their originator was (for the most part) Xerox, whose managers never saw a use for the technology. And there is no "patent" covering Windows--in fact, many of the patents that could be construed to define the modern operating system are held by Apple. As for the "copied the basic coding of KDE, and have emulated Gnome", neither of those statements are true. While Windows may (or may not) incorporate BSD code, it certainly does not incorporate code from either KDE or GNOME. In fact, GNOME could be said to emulate Windows--simplified user interface, integrated network architecture, and centralized system configuration, among others. While I do agree that there is no compelling reason to upgrade to Vista--they fixed nothing that needed to be fixed and added more crap than Congress--please try to validate your arguments.

Re:Vista Copies Open Source software again?

[drsmithy]

While I do agree that there is no compelling reason to upgrade to Vista--they fixed nothing that needed to be fixed and added more crap than Congress--please try to validate your arguments.

What didn't they fix "that needed to be fixed" ?

Re:Vista Copies Open Source software again?

[kbolino]

First, let me say I have compulsive foot-in-mouth disease.

That said, one particular thing was sticking in my head. The networking stack causes (some, all?) system calls and/or applications to hang until all addresses are acquired via DHCP and all persistent network drives are mapped (with like a one or two minute timeout).

I was sitting waiting for my system to acquire an address (the wireless router had in fact died right after authentication) and couldn't do anything with the computer. So it stuck in my mind when it finally did acquire its address and I got on slashdot.

I haven't noticed any other problems that needed fixing, but my comment about useless crap remains (it applied to Windows XP over Windows 2000, too).

Re:Vista Copies Open Source software again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pirates of Silicone Valley - The Movie

Porn Starlet #1 - OOOOH ! Your hard drive is sooo big with such a flexible bootmanager!!

Porn Stud #1 - ARRRRGH! Ya got that right me pretty! Now help Cap'n Jack get his memory stick in yer USB port, arrrgh!

That's a nice MBR you've got there ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a shame if anything ... you know ... happened to it.

Well I just tried it

[The MAZZTer]

I had to replace my MBR for it to work, since I had loaded grub into it.

So I tried to boot into Linux. I must say, I don't remember Linux being a blank screen. I seem to recall it being more interactive...

Direct Download

[Computer Guru]

Seeing as the SQL is down, here's a direct link: http://neosmart.net/downloads/software/EasyBCD/Eas yBCD%201.5.exe

the *Ubuntu* post on Overwrite mbr

[towsonu2003]

Your friendly Ubuntu post is here ;)

Ubuntu isn't much different either: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/grub- installer/+bug/47229
its grub doesn't like other distros either.

But this is not to say that Windows' "overwrite mbr" isn't a bug...

I Don't Get It...

[webroach]

...I've always been able to boot into BSoD on Window? How is this news?

completely pointless software

[sgt scrub]

If someone installs fistho over their windows partition on a duel boot system they simply have to use a linux install CD to boot into linux and set grub or lilo back up. I don't remember any windows install not destroying the MBR. I don't remember anyone expecting it to do anything less.

Boot in rescue mode and mount the linux partition
fdisk -l
mount -t partition_type /dev/linux_partition /mnt/sysimage
chroot /mnt/sysimage
live distro's

For grub
grub-install /dev/first_disk (first_disk = hda or sda. check the fdisk -l output if you don't know)
For lilo /sbin/lilo

This has always been possible

[foonf]

Although the blurb explicitly claims that this new bootloader is "more powerful" than NTLDR/boot.ini, in fact it sounds like this new loader is doing the same thing (starting grup/lilo/etc. from the windows boot loader) that people have been doing for ages with NTLDR. Here is an ancient HOWTO on how to do it.

Re:This has always been possible

[foonf]

Okay, so that link was the opposite of what I claimed, but this one describes the right process.

"among the most powerful"?

[Shadowlore]

"Windows Vista's new bootmanager is a double-edged sword. It's one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence, and a far cry from the very limiting boot.ini of legacy Windows operating systems. But it overwrites the MBR without a second thought, and doesn't provide any means for users of alternate operating systems and boot managers to use their old system.

Then it is not necessarily among the most powerful. That is a absic feature among virtually all of the rest. Others do allow you to do that and more. GRUB will boot most any OS that runs on x86, allows to you install in the MBR or not in the MBR, lets you "remap" the order of drives in the system so you can put certain OSes that think they HAVE to be on the first disk. You can change it's appearance install to floppy, use it on a CD (IIRC), and more. LILO will do this as well. GRUB will allow you to edit things at boot time as well, though LILO does not. So I suppose if you cast the net wide enough to catch all boot managers then you can say it is, but then that's kinda pointless. Where is the line drawn? Top 10%, 25%? Any demarcation from 25% and below will likely result in it not being among "the most powerful in existence".

Google cache; good but no screenshots

[Eliman]

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:KeYr-YmH3ooJ: neosmart.net/dl.php%3Fid%3D1+http://neosmart.net/d l.php%3Fid%3D1&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=fir efox-a yay...

More info on booting Linux with Vista Boot Manager

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you're interested Port 25 just posted some information about using the Vista Boot Manager to boot Linux last week: http://port25.technet.com/archive/2006/10/13/Using -Vista_2700_s-Boot-Manager-to-Boot-Linux-and-Dual- Booting-with-BitLocker-Protection-with-TPM-Support .aspx

beh...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the west, you overwrite your MBR.
In Soviet Russia, your MBR ...

Oh, wait ....

or...

[oohshiny]

Alternatively, you can banish the Vista boot loader to its own partition and boot with Grub. Or, better yet, banish the Vista boot loader together with Vista entirely from your disk.

Looks like EasyBCD does not exist

[tonyt3]

When I click on their pages I am directed to a message that says the account has been closed. It does not say why. t

Re:Looks like EasyBCD does not exist

[Jugalator]

Yes, the owner is supposed to contact the billing department so I have no idea what the deal is!

Probably some cover up conspiracy where they only tell us the Slashdot vultures exceeded his allocated bandwidth. :o

Re:Looks like EasyBCD does not exist

[Computer Guru]

Yeah, it's called /. and OSNews and Digg and NeoWin.... all at once of course. it hurts. Here's a mirror: http://www.upitfree.com/easybcd/EasyBCD%201.5.rar

Boot Record Mastery

[Doc Ruby]

" Boot Linux, BSD, and OS X from Vista"

That's not "from" Vista, it's despite Vista.

OT/KVM - Re:2 OS's running simultaneously

[PCMeister]

While slightly off-topic, the only way to switch between two OS' in a non-virtualized way from a simple keystroke (or three) is to use a KVM on two systems. Period!!

Roll that up and smoke it anyway you want!

And it's easy to fix

[phorm]

I've had quite a few times where a windows reinstall nuked my linux MBR. The solution, boot from a bootCD and then reinstall grub or whatever. It's not like XP installed, automatically decided to nuke my reiserfs/ext3 partitions for no reason, and wiped my other OS's from existance. An MBR is needed to get into the various OS's installed on the partitions, but having a bootloader overwrite the MBR isn't going to kill the data in those OS's unless it kills the partition table or mangles non-install partitions while it's at it (which no windows I know of does).

Re:And it's easy to fix

[Gr8Apes]

or, just point boot.ini to the linux boot loader. (Unless grub installs in the MBR only - don't know, been a while, lilo is working just fine ;)

Get me one of those

[shadow_slicer]

"If you reboot your machine remotely, and forget that the last option selected has no network support, you have no way to access the machine."

Question:
How do you reboot the machine remotely from a configuration that has no network support?

Mirror of EXE

[Computer Guru]

http://www.upitfree.com/easybcd/EasyBCD%201.5.rar Hope it helps someone. It's on a dedicated server, shouldn't go down too quickly this time.

Microsoft booting

[Z34107]

Microsoft's decision to trash the MBR probably isn't a malicious attempt to make dual-booting with Linux a pain - it seems to be normal, benign laziness.

Why would you waste all those man-hours coding a powerful, multi-OS bootloader that your OS doesn't need? It's not like Windows' normal demographic cares, and it's not like there aren't utilities out there that do the same thing for those that do care.

Re:Microsoft booting

[TheNetAvenger]

It isn't even laziness...

Here is how it works, the MS bootloader in previous versions as well as the new one in Vista work 'just fine' for other operating systems and can be used as your bootloader, but not ALWAYS.

However, for Microsoft to 'recognize' your current MBR and offer it as an option, would mean they would have to 'ensure' their bootloader technology works and supports all other OSes...

This is a big area of liability and even support that MS does not want to assume responsibility for, since unlike an Open Source project, MS could more easily be sued for trying to support all OSes in their bootloader and either mess up so that one doesn't boot properly from it or even leave out an OS and have that company sue MS for strong arm tatics, even if they just overlooked the OS to support it.

MS is the 800lb gorilla, espeically now, and they can't take risks like this, so they focus on making sure their bootloader does what it is supposed to do for their OS, and if others want to strap into, then they are free to do so at their own risk, with no legal liability of compatibility or exlusion concerns for MS.

Besides, you don't see Solaris, OSX, and most Linux and BSD distributions very good about preserving other OSes MBRs. Microsoft is NOT an exception in this regard.

MS also has been good to leave their bootloader unlocked, so that you can easily add other OSes to it if you choose to use it as your system's main bootloader. In the old pre-Intel*nix boom, it was actually a good thing that MS's NT booloader would work with other OSes, even if they didn't add them to the menu automatically. In those days there wasn't a large number of free or open source bootloaders around at the time and you had to buy bootloader software.

Re:Microsoft booting

[sumdumass]

It was my understanding, And i may be wrong, that Microsoft didn't just write over the MBR but also made it incompatible with lilo, grub and most other open boot loaders in Vista. Now i can understand those other boot managers or even microsoft's own needing support added and microsoft not wanting to support them automaticly. But, I was under the impresion that it was being purposly made incompatible and this was why the EasyBCD loader was great news (even if the website's account was slashdoted into backruptcy). I will admit, I am recalling this from memory in other discusion about it and i could be wrong.

Now as for the boot loader microsoft provides. I would say they have alterior motives planned for it. Alterior as in other uses besides just a boot loader. You could pipe another MBR thru the loader and create vitual drives with filesystems that only exist or are readable when the loader is used. Also you could pipe programs into it in much the same way to bumpstart some DRM process and tie directly into the trusted computing model without destroying other uses for the same system hardware by locking it into firmware directly. I can see Other boot loaders doing it too but it would explain why microsoft's new loader is much more powerfull.

I've seen things like this before with Some OEM configs were you press some F key to enter into a diag screen with an imager of some sorts to restore the OS. It could be that microsoft might even have plans to extend system restore to a hidden partition that cannot be infected by virus' or malware simular to goback or something were you don't need to boot into windows to recover. If they don't plan on doing it, that might be a good idea for some project, Hide a BartsPE disk and copy some system restore files to it then initiate a system restore when windows reboots wildly or refuses to load even into safe mode because of Viril attack or malfinctioning applications/drivers.

Re:Microsoft booting

[TheNetAvenger]

I am not sure about Vista making the MBR incompatible, I have not seen this, but it is possible. However the changes are not something that cannot be coded around if they do exist, even though it will force updates of the other bootloaders.

As for the alterior motives for the change in the bootloader, it is just this simple, it is more secure, and is also needed for some of the new technologies like bitlocker that encrypts the whole drive.

They could also have other plans, I have heard things like a Media Player boot of Vista that was very lightweight for watching movies and music, and this would use and benefit from the new bootloader in Vista if it ever sees the light of day.

However, I don't think the change was malicious to hurt other OSes or had future intent to add DRM. Just like Vista itself, there have been tons of DRM FUD and rumors of stuff it would have, yet it isn't anymore DRMed than XP or even OSX if OSX plans on supporting HD video. Vista does support things like TPM, but the only use of TPM in Vista is Bitlocker, which makes it easier for people that have TPM enabled hardware so they don't have to rely on a USB key.

I am a bit curious about the incompatibility you bring up with the bootloader, so I'm off to check some sources and see what bootloaders it does break. I would guess there are going to be some that will break if they are assuming the old boot.ini and coded only for this type of Windows bootloader.

Take Care.

Re:Microsoft booting

[It'sYerMam]

I believe it's slightly more complex than that. First of all, in every linux install I've done, including newbie friendly distros like Ubuntu, you have the option of what bootloader to use, where to install and to not use any at all. In windows, it just steamrolls over whatever was there before. Now, you're quite right that GRUB, LILO etc have the option of steamrolling the MBR, but if you tell it not to, it doesn't. Not only that, but if you want to install one of these, you can install it elsewhere, then point to that BR from a different bootloader. Windows doesn't give you this option, at least not without manually tinkering.

Then, if you do install windows first and then linux, then there have been instances where the windows bootloader refuses to be run by the linux one. I've never experienced this, so I don't know what this problem is like in terms of severity and ease of solution, but that is not a problem with GRUB/LILO.

I strongly doubt MS do this in order to harm open source; that reeks of conspiracism. What is significantly possible is that it's due to sloppy programming.

Re:Microsoft booting

[Anonymous Coward]

They've improved in recent years actually. Back in the days of windows 95, BIOSs often had an "anti-virus" option that when enabled would suspend everything and prompt you for permission when anything tried to write to the MBR. Useful to stop boot sector viruses from installing, but we don't really see those anymore.

However, I remember doing a windows 95 install with that option turned on. It rewrote the MBR with the same as it already contained (I was overwriting an existing install) BEFORE asking which disk to install on. I only noticed this because the virus warning message popped up. I tested this behaviour with windows 2000 (not XP though, I don't have a motherboard with anti-virus anymore) and it didn't write to the MBR before it should.

link

[Anonymous Coward]

the link is dead

Suspended?

[d33p1x]

I'm trying to access the "EasyBCD" site from Bangalore, India, but I'm getting an error from this page instead:

http://mumbai.micfo.com/suspended.page/
This Account Has Been Suspended
Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.

Poor chap got slashdotted, perhaps.

Re:Suspended?

[davmoo]

See, that's the Slashdot Way. We show our appreciation for someone creating free software by pounding their server in to the ground, and shooting their bandwidth bill in to the stratosphere.

This is why I keep saying that when its something put out by a "little guy" (in otherwords, two guys in a garage, not Microsoft), the very least Slashdot could do is mirror the site for a few days. I used to think that having your site announced on Slashdot was a good thing, but now I would avoid it.

Grub

[ralph1]

Is so great however you have to rtfm lilo is a piece of crap compared and for that matter so is all others. Windows Linux Cisco os390 DEC IBM COMPAQ MVS VMS Certs go here.

Slashdotted to death!

[Bismillah]

This Account Has Been Suspended Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.

Re:largest software project in mankind's history

[Anonymous Coward]

Personaly, I choose to instal lilo onto a floppy (the boot code). Then go in later and move it to the hard drive. This allows me to boot to a boot disk and streight into linux if neccesary. Also it allows for a backup of lilo's config in case windows trashes the partition linux is on.

the begst solution so far is:
1. let Linux install lilo to its own partition. Like hda3, or hdb1
2. install Smart Boot Manager and boot lilo from that into MBR of the first disk

advantages are:
You can have several Linux and/or *BSD installations snd/or windows installations.
You can reinstall SBM from Windows (if windows hoses your MBR)
You can use SBM from the floppy.

You can also use GAG boot manager instead of Smart Boot Manager.
I use GAG for notebooks (it also works from a boot CD)

Here's how to make a double boot pc

[Mr Europe]

What ever MS would do, it cannot prevent the user to create a double boot pc. Here's one way to do it:
1. You need two disks. Install Vista with one disk only or buy it preinstalled.
2. Install your favourite Linux on the second disk with Grub or Lilo.
3. Make the second disk the booting disk.

When the pc boots the Grub/Lilo gets the control. There you can select whether to boot Linux or Visva.

BootIt NG makes a mockery of other bootloaders

[macraig]

Terabyte Unlimited makes an unglamorous product named BootIt Next Generation (or BootIt NG, or simply BING) that renders the debate over grub and ntldr moot, because it makes pretty much every other bootloader seem infantile by comparison.

I don't work for Terabyte and don't receive any money from them whatsoever; in fact, the money flowed the other direction some years ago and I'm glad that it did. BING ain't free, but it costs less than whatever sexy videogame you're planning to buy next month... with which you'll probably be bored and done a month after that. Perhaps the money would be better spent on a bootloader that allows more than four primary partitions and lets you explicitly define exactly which partitions are visible to each OS, and will serve your needs for years to come?

Answers here

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Breaking Apple's Mac OS X license agreement, which says that Mac OS X is to be run only on Apple-branded computers
2. Pirating Mac OS X (Intel), since Mac OS X (Intel) is not available as a standalone OS at present
3. Running a horribly hacked version of Mac OS X, with critical pieces of the system modified, including the kernel
4. Running Mac OS X in an unupdateable state, since any official Apple software updates that overwrite modified pieces of the hacked version of Mac OS X will break it
5. Running Mac OS X in a state completely unsupported by its vendor
6. Possibly violating civil or criminal law in your jurisdiction

1. Aww, I broke their lego castle.
2. YARRR!
3. Code by Apple = brilliant. Code by anyone else = horribly hacked. We live in a horribly, horribly hacked world my friend.
4. I think I'll opt for Horribly Hacked updates, those are more compatible for my system.
5. That'd be any state outside USA. I'll just put 'Other' here.
6. Pirate > terrorist > ninja > criminal. I'm already on top of that food ladder, why try harder?

Time for some spelling fascism.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's V-O-I-L-A. The viola is a musical instrument.

Re:Time for some spelling fascism.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's V-O-I-L-A.

Hello, mr. spelling nazi, meet mr link nazi.

Need for a user-controlled HD security partition.

[lpq]

Seems like there could be a market case for reserving an area on a disk that isn't visible upon boot unless the "extra" partiton is made visible before the OS boot. After the OS is booted, the hard disk would appear to be a regular hard disk with Track 0, Partition 0 *starting* on the first track past your user-reserved, secure/invisible partition.

For example a secure HD might come with a 30G "hidden" at the beginning or end of the physical disk. Upon boot, if "key" (isn't inserted in computer during boot, the physcial HD (really size 100G) boots up with a 60G disk visable. Without the key (sw, hw, whatever) present on boot, it formats and functions like a 60G HD.

With the key installed, it boots off the hidden partition table. From there you run your "well mannered" OS's, they can boot other OS's or execute an "eject/disable key", and boot into the 60G sandbox where Vista can believe it has the entire device to itself.

Of course the priviledged OS could alternatively, launch the Vista OS within a VM. It could have a dual-boot HW config as though it was a multi-dockable laptop where many hardware changes get ignored: ethernet ports, hard disk, peripheral changes even disk-controllers as my docked laptop at work has a PCI-bridge & bus to a PCI-SCSI-RAID card, while the one at home uses alternate hardware, and an external eSata self-contained RAID box. Screen configs can differ -- mouse and keyboard config, etc. Neat thing -- it's all the same processor, and main-hard disk image, so it really is all the same computer -- laptop configs give much lattitude in changing in/out hardware.

Now if only I can get native XP 3d-accelerated graphics while in the VM...sigh.

-l

Shrug

[trupoet]

Let Windows have the MBR.

Install grub in the partition:

setup (hd0,0)

Then create a fake boot sector file:

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/boot.bin bs=512 count=1

Copy /boot.bin to windows and point the boot.ini to it:

C:\boot.bin="Gentoo Linux"

Safe procedures

[Gr8Apes]

With any system with Windows cohabitating, create 'x' primary partitions where x equal the number of base type OSes you're going to install (Windows, DOS, anything else). Use the fact that MS products can only see a single primary partition to your advantage to prevent windows from screwing up your system.

I used to use OS/2's Bootmanager, which was probably the premiere boot loader for years, and still may be for what it does. It was the initial PartitionMagic bootloader, until the swapped it out with their current piece of junk.

If you run into issues with too many primary partitions, or partition sizes being too large (the 1024 cylinder limit) you can always make your windows partitions smaller, but not smaller than 50MB, and use a logical drive/partition as the installation drive, with the 50MB partition being the boot partition. (Why 50MB when a boot drive only needs 5MB? Because MS required a min of 25MB on your boot drive to install a service pack, although XP SP2 finally did away with the boot drive limitation. There's no guarantee that some future SP from MS or updates from others won't try to use C: as their default tmp location.)

lastly, boot.ini can be edited manually to boot systems from other partitions pretty easily, once you figure out the esoteric drive/partition identification schema.

GRUB and MBR

[phorm]

Generally the default is to point GRUB at the MBR, but you can in fact install at the head of a partition if you so choose, in which case yes it could be bootstrapped through the windows bootloader.

Mind you, I probably wouldn't want to: A grub boot with a nice splash-screen is a nice way to start things up.

no floppy? As if there's not other options...

[norminator]

If you don't have a floppy, you can probably boot to a USB flash drive. Or, you certainly have a CD drive, you can boot to an Ubuntu LiveCD (or any other Distro's LiveCD that has grub on it) and do exactly what the GP suggested (I have, and it's a fairly painless way to do things).

I KNEW IT!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew some whiney bitch fanboi would post something about stealing Apple's precious OS. Look, dickwad, we're real sorry that some people have decided to hack your boyfriend Steve Job's software - but they should have known it was going to happen. So stop your bitch ass sobbing before you get smacked in the face.

what's your problem with virtualization?

[alizard]

I run Windows virtually via Win4Lin 9.x over my Fedora Core 3 host OS.

I switch OSs with a click of a mouse into the X-Window in which I have Windows running, and routinely cut and paste data between Linux and Windoze applications. I even use Linux and Windows graphics applications to edit the same file at the same time. (be careful about saving the edited file before changing OSs)

I plan to continue this practice after I upgrade to VMware (or Xen, if it supports clipboard between guest / host OSs) over an upgraded Linux OS.

. What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment.

It would be cool if they could repeal the law of gravity, too.

I don't think "virtualized" means quite what you think it does.

speaking from experience, why bother?

[alizard]

Dual boot on a desktop is a pain in the ass no matter how implemented. The fundamental problem is that Murphy's Law dictates that the next operation you want to make on a file is going to require use of whatever OS you are NOT booted to. That cut short my initial experiments with RedHat9 way back when... when I used RH9, I couldn't get to my e-mail or other Windows apps, and with Windows booted, I couldn't work with Linux.

So I run Windows in Win4Lin 9.x virtualization software using FC3 as a host OS (yes, I'm planning to upgrade to Xen or VMware), and cut and paste freely between Linux and Windows apps, and can even work on the same file in Linux and Windows apps at the same time if I absolutely have to. Why would I want to go from this to dual boot?