Opinions on my idea for testing other distros.

inha · #1 25th August 2004, 04:25 PM

I was thinking about buying an used 10-20gb harddrive to be my 3rd harddrive solely for testing other distros. I was mainly thinking about trying out some "harder" distros for educational purposes and by doing so I could probably make sure that I don't mess up my system too badly. Does anyone have windows and more than one linux distro on one machine? As far as I know it shouldn't cause any problems but I'm not completely certain on that when it comes to booting/grub.

sailor · #2 25th August 2004, 10:38 PM

i run Win XP. FC 2 and Xandros....in my case the last OS installed (xandros) installed lilo and all other OS's were picked up by the lilo install....I would have used grub had it been an option...
prior to xandros the boot manager was Grub, installed by FC 2...

RedFedora · #3 26th August 2004, 02:39 AM

I used to be a Win98 and Linux man. But, for the past year, I've been a RedHat/Fedora only
user. Just one distro here...nothing else to see.

imdeemvp · #4 26th August 2004, 02:44 AM

i ran xp (just for game like halo and to keep my virus software updated).......MAIN linux box is FC2 and occasionally i play around with mandrake......and tried other like college linux and slackware

Jman · #5 26th August 2004, 05:02 PM

I do not boot more than one disto, but I have a theory.

If you want to be safe just install the new disto on this test drive, and have everything mounted on that drive. That way you don't mess up your valuable data in your /home directory. Note that all your personal config files won't be there though.

Perhaps you don't even have to mess with your grub bootloader and can configure your bios to boot from that drive when you want to test something.

Which "harder" distro were you thinking of?

awillard69 · #6 26th August 2004, 05:18 PM

I've found multiple boots more confusing than helpful. Mainly, it's getting the other OS's to play together, as in what file system formats can be read when another OS is running. Also, you have to reboot to get another OS's features.

I run FC2 on my main box - it never goes down short of an extended power outage.

I would rather scrounge another PC and build it standalone...then you get your system running at the same time you are working on your "other" system. That way you can still 'net for your help or fixes.

That's my 2 cents....

inha · #7 26th August 2004, 05:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jman

I do not boot more than one disto, but I have a theory.

If you want to be safe just install the new disto on this test drive, and have everything mounted on that drive. That way you don't mess up your valuable data in your /home directory. Note that all your personal config files won't be there though.

Perhaps you don't even have to mess with your grub bootloader and can configure your bios to boot from that drive when you want to test something.

Which "harder" distro were you thinking of?

Sounds like a good idea.
Maybe gentoo or slackware. I've read that the gentoo stage 1 installation is an extremely educational process.

awillard: I don't have room for an another pc in my apartment and I'm not that into the idea of getting a laptop just for this. a 20gb harddrive will be cheaper than getting an another computer, even if it's an old one, too.

ghaefb · #8 26th August 2004, 05:49 PM

No other distros here.. Fedora only.
A long time ago there was a dual boot with Windows

muckraker · #9 30th August 2004, 11:33 AM

I like the idea. I had /hdb split off into a couple of partitions for such testing, but I think the third hd would be the way to go. Keep everything separate. So far test-driven some of the live distros, plus Peanut, College, and Vector.
What's on /hda? Sorry you asked. Win98SE. Sort of. Can't remember when I last did anything constructive with it.
Haven't figured out how to stack several OS's on GRUB yet, but I keep thinking for test drives I can put the boot loader on floppy.

inha · #10 30th August 2004, 12:33 PM

What's the problem with stacking OSs in grub? the entries look relatively simple so that you could c/p one more in there and just edit it so that it finds the OS on the test drive.

muckraker · #11 31st August 2004, 06:02 AM

Only recently started fiddling with other distros; don't have the nuances of GRUB wired in yet.

regeya · #12 31st August 2004, 07:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by inha

Sounds like a good idea.
Maybe gentoo or slackware. I've read that the gentoo stage 1 installation is an extremely educational process.

It is indeed. If you're determined to learn more about Linux systems, this is a good choice, IMHO. I just moved from using Gentoo as my only system on my main machine to using FC. It was mainly motivated by wanting to give FC a try, and partially because I kept screwing things up. After a couple of years of using Gentoo, you'd think I'd have been over that, but I wasn't. :o

One piece of advice: if you do decide to go for Gentoo instead of Slackware, build your own kernel instead of using genkernel. Genkernel sucks. The last time I tried it (not that long ago, really) the hardware autodetection code was loading every stinking ALSA module.

imdeemvp · #13 31st August 2004, 07:06 AM

i tried gentoo just for the fun of the command line.....guess what i found i am too lazy to type everything i want setup i rather just CLICK foward

inha · #14 31st August 2004, 11:13 AM

that's it. I'm getting rid of xp now. it just decided that my usb devices don't work anymore. I did the traditional remove and reinstall on all related drivers but it still won't work and I've reinstalled xp so many times before that I'm not going to do it anymore. I've got the gentoo iso downloaded and the handbook printed. once I've got that iso burned I'll take my first step in becoming a bonafide computer geek.

for gaming I still have my ps2 and I'm sure more and more games will have their linux versions out in the future. and I'll save those 20-40e I was going to spend on the new harddrive.

inha · #15 1st September 2004, 11:10 AM

report: the installation went just fine up until configuring grub. I had to do an uprgrade installation of FC2 to reinstall grub to be able to boot back into fedora. I'll try to edit my grub.conf on this side of the machine to be able to get into gentoo.