dual booting fedora and ubntu should i use grub or grub2?

[sreek]

Hi,
I am using my computer with fedora 12 installed. Now i want to dual boot his computer with ubuntu 10.04. Now my idea is that i will install grub2 of ubuntu into its own boot menu and use the fedora legacy grub by chainloading ubuntu. Now my question is that is this the best option?
Or i install grub2 of ubuntu into MBR and do osprobe and find fedora 12?
I am familiar with grub legacy. But i never tried grub2. So i want to get some suggestions regardng this.
:)
Thank You

[glennzo]

I have limited experience with grub2. I found it to be a pain, if installed to the MBR. I triple boot my laptop so any time there was a kernel update for Fedora or Redhat I needed to boot into Ubuntu specifically to run sudo update-grub just to get the new Fedora or Redhat kernel recognized. This was a simple task but one that I found somewhat annoying and inconvenient. I never tried installing Ubuntu's grub2 anywhere else and chainloading it from the Fedora or Redhat grub. I believe that I've read that it can very easily be done. If so, it would be a better solution for someone like myself. I think you're on the right track.

[sreek]

Thank You Glenzo.
I am going to try it tomorrow. Lets see how it works.
:)

[Trapper]

There are lots of example through google for multibooting with a grub/grub2 mixture. Here's just an example:

http://www.linuxforums.org/articles/dual-linux-boot-with-mixed-grub-grub2_907.html

I'm sure Ubuntu has documentation and/or forum threads directly related to this too.

Grub2 is a pita until one familiarizes with it and actually works with it. Then it becomes easy and one discovers it's advantages. One being the custom_40 file. That's where you put custom boot entry's for your grub.cfg.

Let's say you're running Ubuntu 10.01. An entry like the one below will allow you to boot a U 9.10 install utilizing the most current kernel that's installed for it. The latest available kernel that's installed is picked out automagically.



menuentry "Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic X86_64 Ext3 (on /dev/sdb9)" {
set root=(hd1,9)
linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb9 ro quiet splash
initrd /initrd.img

One of the caveats with grub2 though is that it's not designed to work well with grub. It's designed to replace it. Therefore if you wish to multiboot in a mixed environment you are going to have to do things differently, lose some grub2 functionality and the custom_40 file entry's will be different than the above example.

Unfortunately, we're trying to mix apples and oranges when it comes to grub and grub 2. May nix flavors, including Fedora, are dragging their feet when it comes to moving on to grub2. Unfortunately, that's bad because grub2 makes life a whole lot easier .... but the environment is limited to grub2. Once you move out of that box and start mixing it makes life more difficult.

Personally, I do not put grub2 and grub flavors into a multiboot situation anymore. It's like trying to run jets and helicopters in the same air traffic pattern at the airport. More headaches than what it's worth.

[sonoran]

There have been a number of discussions on grub2 in the fedora mail lists; here's one post that gives the Red Hat/fedora take on what you call "foot-dragging": http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2009-November/040705.html

Keep in mind that Red Hat doesn't just have users, it has customers. If grub2 does not do what Red Hat requires of its bootloader, how can they adopt it? And if you read between the lines of those posts it sounds as though there were/are more than just software incompatibilities between grub2 and Red Hat.

[mrjoeyman]

Hi,
I am using my computer with fedora 12 installed. Now i want to dual boot his computer with ubuntu 10.04. Now my idea is that i will install grub2 of ubuntu into its own boot menu and use the fedora legacy grub by chainloading ubuntu. Now my question is that is this the best option?
Or i install grub2 of ubuntu into MBR and do osprobe and find fedora 12?
I am familiar with grub legacy. But i never tried grub2. So i want to get some suggestions regardng this.
:)
Thank You

"If you are going to use GRUB legacy for booting, then you should:

•Install GRUB into the MBR when installing the distribution that ships it. In this case Fedora.
•Install GRUB 2 into the root partition where the distribution using it is installed, in this case Ubuntu. Otherwise, if you plan on using GRUB 2 as your default, you need to do things the other way around.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub-2.html#mozTocId928097