I have Freespire 1.0.13 OS.

Can someone explain to me what is the difference if one installs not to the MBR compared to install to the MBR. What are the advantages of one over the other, so on and so forth !

Best Regards,
obnascar

In the past ("long ago") my own experience was that a dual-boot with Linux and some other operating system was easier to do (i.e. it didn't break up neither of the OS's boot abilities) if bootloader was not installed to MBR, and afterwards Linux was easier to wipe out too. Nowadays the setups are nice and installing to MBR is just ok, if not even preferred, since you can just overwrite the bootloader using some fancy OS install disc. It even works better (own experience, again).

It has some physical difference (which part of the HD is used) but the meaning for the user is not that important anymore, especially if you use some major distribution with a nice graphical installer that just asks you if you want to boot windows or some other OS too, and that's all you need to know about installing a boot loader.

Thank you b0uncer, that was a very informing reply and fast. I will add this to my "Computer Library" files. I am runing four Linux distro's that are write to the MBR and I was wondering if I did the correct thing.

Thanks again,
obnascar

If you've installed GRUB (or actually any boot loader that can do multiboots) already, and install another operating system after that, you don't need to install the bootloader then at all (just the first time). What you do after the first OS is installed, is

1) install the other operating systems, but don't install the bootloader if you can let it uninstalled (Windows won't let you do this I'm afraid)
2) after the other installations boot the OS that has a working bootloader (like grub or lilo) and edit it's bootloader configuration: add the other operating systems' information there
3) if you install Windows after Linux, you will most probably get your Linux' bootloader overwritten (unless not using MBR; that's another story). In this case you'll just need to boot your Linux from a floppy or a cd (most installation cds are ok today) and re-install the bootloader using lilo or grub-install which have manuals on the net.

Of course you can install the bootloaders every time, but it's just overwork. Though if they all (during setup) find out the existing operating systems, you don't need to manually alter the bootloader config, just answer "yes" when asked if you'd like to boot operating system X that was found. Anyway, after the last operating system is installed, make sure that every operating system boots and if it doesn't (i.e. no boot entry), add it to the bootloader configuration.

As a sidenote I can say that you can even make Windows' own bootloader boot Linuxes (multiple). In this case you'd need to create an image of Linux' boot partition (if it's separate), the part of Linux install where the bootloader and it's files reside, and put that file into Windows directory tree (under C:\Windows for example) and alter Windows' boot configuration (was it boot.cfg ?). I have not done this for a while, so you will want to check out these advices from other web sites to make sure I didn't say anything wrong or so, but basically the procedure is just to take an image of the desired operating system boot part, put the file inside Windows and add it's entry into the boot config file. I still would prefer lilo or grub, or even some 3rd-party bootloader..but it's an alternative.

Of course I did not know this, I have been writing to the MBR each time, thanks for that info.

I wish I had just one half of your knowledge on this topic as you, runing onto a person like yourself is such a pleasure !

I think your pal bOuncer has given you excellent advice. I have long since been attached to GRUB myself, and I tend to use LILO and other boot loaders so infrequently that when I do use them, I tend to have to read up all over again to remember their idiosyncracies. LILO requires that you run the LILO program, for instance, every time you make a configuration change of any kind, whereas GRUB is great about reading the configuration file each time it runs, plus GRUB can be used interactively to access new or different kernels, so GRUB is the way to go when booting multiple kernels.

As far as the MBR goes, there is one Master Boot Record (MBR) on each disk, and it is small in size and fixed in location. I tend to have only one distribution manage my MBR, which tends to be the system I use most often, and I almost always manage it from GRUB. Even on that system, I tend to write my boot partition to BOTH the MBR and the root of the partition being used. For other distributions, I write the boot partition only to the root of the partition I am installing, not to the MBR, unless I want my new distribution to take over management of the MBR.

The difference is that the MBR is outside the partition you are in; there is one per disk. The root of the boot partition exists on each and every bootable disk partition.

There was a good primer on bootloaders on Linux Reality podcast a while back. You might get something out of it.

Here is link:
http://www.linuxreality.com/podcast/...d-bootloaders/