Help with triboot XP Vista and Debian
 

Hi, I just got a nice 200gb new hard drive and am want to use a tri-boot of XP, Vista Ultimate and Debian. I was wondering whether vista's built in boot manager could handle a linux distro or whether i should use lilo or grub, and whether there is a third party app that would do it better. Also don't judge me on the window's its not like i paid for them and their handy for gaming and programming so meh :p.

I would use grub, just because there is more documentation on it and I don't think Vista's bootloader is capable of booting linux
and just a side question, why is windows more handy for programming?

Any of the loaders will do the job - Vista can be chainloaded from grub/lilo just like XP.
I use grub out of preference, but if you want to use the Vista loader, go get EasyBCD (a freebie). It will go find Linux installs (if grub/lilo installed to a partition) and add them to the (Vista) boot menu. Easy - no copying of boot sector records like the "old days".

I havent actually tried dual booting with vista yet, but typically the best scenerio was always to install all of the versions of windows first, starting with the oldest, and to install linux last and use grub/lilo.


I would be interested if you do get a triple boot working what you end up doing to make it work :)