Hi,

is it possible to use an alternate partition table format on x86 machines, e.g. "sun disklabel" or "SGI" under Linux? I do not like the PC (DOS) Partition table restrictions (only four primary partitions, extended, logical...).
Is there a "linear" partition table format that has fewer restrictions about how many primary partitions are allowed, and that doesn't use nested partitions?
I heard that M$ also plans to introduce a new partition table format for PCs running Windows. Can Linux use this at the moment?

Will GRUB be able to boot from a disk with an alternate layout?

I know that Linux supports many different partition table formats, but are they only supported on the respective hardware platforms or can a Linux kernel running on any arch make use of any of the partition types?

I know that, if possible, a different partition table scheme would make it impossible to installer other OSs than Linux on the machine, but this is not an issue for me...