Boot Sector on dual boot PC. Remove Mandrake and replace with FreeBSD
 

Hello All -

I have decided that I do not really like my Mandrake 10.0 installation. I am not really learning all that much. I had a discussion with a few people on a mailing list. FreeBSD was one OS that was highly recommended. So here is my current situation. I have my PC set up as a dual boot with XP Pro and Mandrake 10.0 official. I have LILO on the Main Boot Sector. I want to remove Mandy and put FreeBSD in it's place.

I am unsure if I removed Mandy and install FreeBSD in it's place that the boot up sequence would become borked. What is the proper way to do this?

Also, I downloaded the 4.9 stable from Linuxiso.org, but during my reading on here I gather that 5.2.1 would be a better choice? Can anyone confirm that?

FreeBSD uses it's own boot loader, not LILO and if I remember correctly, it detects bootable partitions automatically (though it may not identify Windows as Windows, but merely ???), however I've never tried to dual-boot with FreeBSD; I use it primarly as a Server OS so I have no reason to.

As for FreeBSD 4.9 vs 5.2.1 it depends on if you are planning on running a server. 4.9/4.10 is the tired, tested & true version of FreeBSD whereas 5.2.1 is more cutting-edge. If you aren't running a server or mission-critical applications then I'd go with 5.x.

5.3 will be coming out soon though so I'd wait for that if you plan on using FreeBSD 5.x.