Hi there.........I decided to try SuSE about 5 weeks ago and very impressed but have to admit my head is in bits a completely new learning curve, phew!!!!! My system has a primary hard drive with xp installed. Being paranoid I decided to install suse on a slave drive and it handled everything just fine. I realise I am probably 'jumping the gun' but I would like to install Mandrake alongside SuSE. If I partition my slave drive appropriately and install Mandrake will it interfere with the existing multi-boot set up by SuSE? To cut to the chase how do I integrate Mandrake as a choice at startup? If any of that stuff makes any sense I would be very grateful for any feedback.......Ta very much

Mandrake's automatic installation should recognize that there is another OS on the drive and incorporate it into the bootloader. If it doesn't it's a simple matter to edit the bootloader's confg file to allow dual booting no problem.

Grub handles that very well.

I'm not sure why you want to install another distro so soon, and it's really none of my business, but I'd recommend spending some time with the distro you have before jumping into another one. Learn the ins and outs of your distro. Get comfortable with it to the point you know how to correct problems and perform all of the tasks you need your system to perform.

Then you may want to explore other distros. Just my 2cents. probably worth about half that.

"If I partition my slave drive appropriately and install Mandrake will it interfere with the existing multi-boot set up by SuSE?"

Mandrake will want to install its own bootloader on the MBR. The new Mandrake bootloader will probably recognize Mandrake and Windows, but not SuSE. So when you install Mandrake tell Mandrake to NOT install a bootloader on the MBR. You could have Mandrake create a boot floppy if you want.

You set up a triple boot by editing your SuSE bootloader configuration file to include Mandrake. You can do this either before or after the Mandrake install. If SuSE uses LILO then the config file is /etc/lilo.conf. If SuSE uses grub then the config file is /boot/grub/menu.lst.

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Steve Stites

Thanks masonm and jailbait......................yeah you are right - i am getting ahead of myself but at least you have given me something to reflect on and I am very, very appreciative. Cheers guys