I have a dual boot with WinXP on drive and FC4 on a second drive. I would like to add Ubuntu as well.

Is it possible to have two different distributions of Linux on the same drive, or will the boot loader from the last install simply overwrite the first making the first (FC4) unbootable?

Newbie question, I know, but have not heard of this being done. I have seen other forums talk of just not installing a boot loader from the second distro and all three would be listed in GRUB choices at boot. Is this so?

Thanks

Bob

this 'should' work bob, but..

if it doesn't, just go into your backup of grub and put the newest version of ubuntu on there.

good luck.

What you need to do is to install the bootloader (grub/lilo) on the root partition of the linux distro instead of on the MBR. Then, when you've finished installing all the distros, you can install a master bootloader which will chainload the other bootloaders which will boot the required distro.

For example, you want Fedora on /dev/hda1, Mandrake on /dev/hda2, and Suse on /dev/hda3.

All you need to do is that when the installer asks you where to install the bootloader, select "root partition" instead of "MBR". Now, for the distro you install last, install the bootloader on the MBR, and add an entry for each of the "secondary" distros, which will be something like this:

title My Fair Distro
chainloader +1
rootnoverify

This might sound confusing, but this is what I've done. I've got Fedora 3 on /dev/hdb1, Mandrake 9.2 on /dev/hdb2, and Fantasy II Pixie Dust on /dev/hdb3, which is my very own (!) distro. /dev/hdb5 (extended) is swap. You know what, just install Fedora as the last distro, you will understand how I did it.