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My quesiton is: I want atleast a dual boot system.. how many OS's including one Windows Xp, and One Fedora Core, can i put on there? Id like to be able to run Slackware, and gentoo maybe debian also. If i share the boot partition and the SWAP, How many other linuxes can i put on this machine. Id like to put all the OS's on the 80 gig drive, and store all info on the 200 gig drive.
Originally posted by bennett.david Im semi-new to linux
My quesiton is: I want atleast a dual boot system.. how many OS's including one Windows Xp, and One Fedora Core, can i put on there? Id like to be able to run Slackware, and gentoo maybe debian also. If i share the boot partition and the SWAP, How many other linuxes can i put on this machine. Id like to put all the OS's on the 80 gig drive, and store all info on the 200 gig drive.
hdb: 200 gigs
hdb1: VFat partition (as to share with windows and linux)
Will that work out? If not how can it ???
You can only have 4 primary partitions, so after /dev/hdx3 you'll have to have
extended partitions and the next number will therefore be /dev/hdx5 but as
far as how many OSs, just to answer you can have those 5, and you can share
the swap partition and the /boot partitions.
Since you're sharing the swap, with you stats, make it 1GB and put it on /dev/hdb
as a primary partition.
Mine's not exactly the same, but see if this helps you out any
Code:
bash-2.05b# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hdc: 61.4 GB, 61492838400 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7476 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 10 80293+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc2 11 6332 50781465 83 Linux
/dev/hdc3 6333 6940 4883760 83 Linux
/dev/hdc4 6941 7476 4305420 5 Extended
/dev/hdc5 6941 7183 1951866 83 Linux
/dev/hdc6 7184 7305 979933+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc7 7306 7476 1373526 83 Linux
Disk /dev/hdd: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77545 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdd1 1 97 48856+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdd2 98 2035 976752 83 Linux
/dev/hdd3 2036 11723 4882752 83 Linux
/dev/hdd4 11724 77545 33174288 5 Extended
/dev/hdd5 11724 71789 30273232+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdd6 71790 75606 1923736+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdd7 75607 77545 977224+ 83 Linux
Disk /dev/hda: 61.4 GB, 61492838400 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7476 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1216 9767488+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 1217 7476 50283450 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 1217 2432 9767488+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6 2433 4864 19535008+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda7 4865 6688 14651248+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda8 6689 7174 3903763+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda9 7175 7296 979933+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda10 7297 7476 1445818+ b W95 FAT32
bash-2.05b# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdd2 954M 492M 463M 52% /
/dev/hdd1 48M 37M 12M 77% /boot
/dev/hdd3 4.7G 2.0G 2.7G 43% /usr
/dev/hdd5 29G 4.2G 25G 15% /home
/dev/hdd6 1.9G 111M 1.8G 6% /var
/dev/hdd7 955M 38M 917M 4% /tmp
/dev/scd0 652M 652M 0 100% /mnt/cdrw
"My quesiton is: I want atleast a dual boot system.. how many OS's including one Windows Xp, and One Fedora Core, can i put on there? Id like to be able to run Slackware, and gentoo maybe debian also. If i share the boot partition and the SWAP, How many other linuxes can i put on this machine. Id like to put all the OS's on the 80 gig drive, and store all info on the 200 gig drive."
How many OS's can you put? The limit is only space and how much you want each to take up. So put 5, 10, 20, 100 linux OS's on there if you want...
But there is not a lot of reason to do this. Better to just pick the one you like best and get most used to it. They will all do the same job. There is little use in having all these versions unless you need to test various software on each or something...
Well. This guy has 37 OS's on 6 HD's in a single computer. They could actually be on a single HD if it was large enough. With the right boot loader, there is no limit to the number of OS's that can be installed on a drive.
But there is not a lot of reason to do this. Better to just pick the one you like best and get most used to it. They will all do the same job. There is little use in having all these versions unless you need to test various software on each or something...
Becoming familar with another distribution rather than going for it cold turkey is never a bad idea.
While jumping around multiple Linux distros when you are first learning Linux would probably be somewhat confusing, taking them for a test spin to check them out is a good idea. The extra space is also great when upgrading. Just install the new version while keeping the old.
I usually have partitions for a couple main distros 5-10 GB (to acumilate files and add software), and a few for testing distros 3-4 GB.
The main barriers to adding OSs are their partition requirements (do they need a primary?), and what your bootloader can handle. Also the 4 primary max.
I had 5 versions of Linux and two versions of Windows multibooting at once.... but now I'm "really efficient" as Chinaman posts, and have a single boot PC.
But having a multiboot was very useful for determining which distro I wanted to "settle down with" reasonably quickly, so it was good to do for that reason, plus I learned a lot about Linux, because all the distros had to do the same things, but they all did them in slightly different ways. If you learn by comparison and extrapolation (as I do, rather than learning by memorization or rote "do this, then do that" instruction), then having a bunch of distros can work very well for that learning style.
You can pretty much have as many OSes on your system as you have room for, and that can include multiple versions of Windows, Linux, BSD, OS/2 and even Solaris, if you want.
The main issue is managing the bootloader, and shared and network files (if applicable).
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Two Hard Drives How many OS's???
Im semi-new to linux and am getting a new pc with these specs:
