What's the best way to dual boot Windows XP & Linux?
 

Well, I'm an advanced Windows user who is finally making the switch to linux. I'm planning on installing Mandrake 10.1 Official in a few weeks and I'd like to know what has worked for you: what is the best way to do a dual windows xp/linux boot?

1. Should I install Lilo or Grub? (I know it's a matter of preference, but tell me what you think)

2. Should I install it to the MBR or to its own boot partition?

Thanks for your help!

The answers to both your questions are "it depends". Some people prefer lilo while others prefer grub. They both perform the same action though, so to me it is a matter of preference. There is no right or wrong answer; it's whatever you think is best.

Same basic deal with the MBR - some people always install to the MBR, others prefer not to.

My opinion - what difference does it really make, assuming that you aren't going to be booting up at short intervals? Booting is a one time cost, so if one way takes 15 more seconds than the other, what difference does it really make? Just my 2 cents.

For the record I use lilo and install to the MBR, only because that's how I did it the first time. I just as easily could have gone with grub. -- J.W.

If you want nice animated fancy looking screens for your boot loader, go for LILO. If you want a lot of functionalities with flexibility, go for GRUB.
Best is to install it in your MBR.

I might get yelled at, but Grub seems to be the way of the future, so I would get on that bandwagon.

As far as where to boot, unless you know the advantages of not installing your bootloader to the MBR, it probably isn't beneficial to do so.

My two cents: Grub + MBR

Thanks for your quick responses - one more thing. I tried Suse 9.1 (I think it was GRUB in MBR)a while back and it totally messed things up, and I had to refomat everything to get windows back (my MBR became corrupted). So, while I'm leaning towards GRUB, I'm thinking about installing it to a boot partition and then using a program like Acronis OS Selector to boot to it. Would you recommend that, or do you think it's safe to use the MBR? Thanks!

Another question - if I install the bootloader to its own boot partition and can't get it to work, I can always go back and install GRUB in the MBR, right?

When I installed Slackware 10 last week (I'm new too) I used LILO and I put it on the MBR....it didn't work. I tried again, and used Boot Partition, and it worked just fine. Now, I think Slackware didn't give me an option to choose between LILO or GRUB.

I'm using GRUB, on Fedora, and it works fine too. The machine that has Fedora is using MBR, and its working too. So who knows, I think it has something to do with hardware.

There are issues when dualbooting suse9.1 and xp. If you search the suse kb you´ll see a few articles dealing with it. Its not that it will bug everytime, but some people here in LQ have come across this.

For me, the best way to dualboot anything is using smart boot manager. Take a look at btmgr.sourceforge.net/3.7. Its the best boot manager ever. Build a floppy with it, and boot anything that can boot.
You can install either a win version, or a lin, provided you have a lin computer.