How to install multiple linux distributions on a computer

orpolo · 03-23-2004, 07:39 PM

Either way I will let you know, please do the same if you find a solution.

Apart from this CD-RW problem, otherwise Mandrake is great, I love it! And the sound works (in Fedora it doesn't, although it used to work fine in RH8). The first impression of Suse 9.0 is a disappointment.

I have changed my home directory scheme a bit. The problem is that, for example, in the mozilla configuration files there are some absolute path references of the user dir, so it is necessary that the home path appears to be always the same. The home dirs are in my case on an NSF mounted partition /home/

Code:

/home/fedora/$USER
/home/suse/$USER
/home/mandrake/$USER

In Mandrake I mount /home/mandrake to /home, and /home/fedora to /home/fedora. This is the /etc/fstab

Code:

192.168.0.150:/home/mandrake    /home          nfs soft,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,nosuid 0 0
192.168.0.150:/home/fedora      /home/fedora   nfs soft,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,nosuid 0 0
192.168.0.150:/home/suse        /home/suse     nfs soft,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,nosuid 0 0

In Fedora I have /home/fedora mounted to /home

Code:

192.168.0.150:/home/fedora      /home/         nfs soft,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,nosuid 0 0
192.168.0.150:/home/mandrake    /home/mandrake nfs soft,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,nosuid 0 0
192.168.0.150:/home/suse        /home/suse     nfs soft,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,nosuid 0 0

and the same applies to Suse.

This actually involves mounting directories to mounting points on their own disk: in mandrake the mount point /home/fedora is on /home, which is /home/mandrake on the disk server, so the actual mount point is in /home/mandrake/fedora. Confusing, but it seems to work, I hope it is ... "legal"! I wonder if it would work if /home was a local partition.

mmdmurphy · 12-24-2006, 03:00 PM

I hate to say it, but I am not completely satisfied with these answers.

I have a Windows XP system, which I've just carved out a 50 gig partition for Linux, assuming I could install multiple versions under the same partition.... So, I've installed Mandriva, and looks like everyone says the best option is to install under new partitions for every distribution I want to run?????

I can install multiple copies of Windows XP and Windows 2000 in one partition if I am careful...

Baron Of Hell · 12-25-2006, 12:07 AM

So why do you want to install everything on one partition? Is it just a time issue, meaning do you think you wasted your time installing mandriva? If that is the issue I think you will save time down the road when something goes wrong and lose just one distro instead of all of them. I'm a newbie at this so I could be wrong.