installing 3rd Operating System

Nulty

I want to try installing a third operating system along side Win 7 64bit and Ubuntu 10.10 i686.

I have created 97GiB of space at the end of my disk and was thinking of installing another flavour of linux but don't know which yet. I'll probably get some live cds/usbs to test first but I'm just wondering if anyone here has done this before and if they had any problems.

I'm guessing it should be no problem if the new distro uses GRUB but what if it uses a different version of GRUB to the one I'm using now?

Also, anyone want to recommend a distro to try? I want to try a non-Debian distro for experience.

Johnboy1951

Nulty wrote: »

I want to try installing a third operating system along side Win 7 64bit and Ubuntu 10.10 i686.

I have created 97GiB of space at the end of my disk and was thinking of installing another flavour of linux but don't know which yet. I'll probably get some live cds/usbs to test first but I'm just wondering if anyone here has done this before and if they had any problems.

I'm guessing it should be no problem if the new distro uses GRUB but what if it uses a different version of GRUB to the one I'm using now?

Also, anyone want to recommend a distro to try? I want to try a non-Debian distro for experience.

You should have no problems at all.
Just be careful when selecting the install options.

I have had more than 8 separate distros on one HDD .... cannot recall the exact numbers, but think it was 10 on one drive

I have just been trying one from the PCLinuxOS stable .... a new LXDE 2012 release ..... but there are a range of ISOs available ..... all worth considering ..... can be d/loaded from here ....
http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/pclinuxos/live-cd/

I would suggest selecting to install the bootloader of the new OS onto the boot sector of its partition.
That way your present boot set up is not interfered with, but it will require you to add an entry in the boot config to boot the new OS.
Alternatively of course you could allow the new OS to take over boot control .... but if this is just a test I would be inclined not to do that.

.

PogMoThoin

How do you get over 4 partitions per logical drive? Windows is already installed on the drive.

Johnboy1951

PogMoThoin wrote: »

How do you get over 4 partitions per logical drive? Windows is already installed on the drive.

You can have four Primary Partitions per drive.
One of those Primary Partitions can be an Extended Partition.
Within that Extended Partition you can have as many Logical Partitions as you wish or have space for.

Windows has nothing to do with partitioning the drive ...... except that it often takes up two or more of the available partition numbers.

Oracle

Yeah this shouldn't be a problem as long as you install Windows operating systems first, and then GNU/Linux. I love the way GNU/Linux just lets you install other distros and re-writes the MBR for you. So you don't need to get your hands dirty. Makes it so easy to install multiple OSes.

I'd say try Fedora they've a new release out, it's worth having a look at. I prefer Trisquel myself, it's a fully free GNU/Linux distro without any proprietary software, although it is Ubuntu/Debian based. I like it because it simple to use and has everything I need. Good luck with it.

h57xiucj2z946q

Just be careful if some of your distro's still use grub 1, while others use grub 2. To make life easier, install the one which uses grub 2 last, otherwise google up on grub chain-loading.

Nulty

I tried Ubuntu 11.10 (3.0.12/15) cause I had the live iso there. I'm not going to bother trying anymore cause I've got a Toshiba laptop that is a pain in the arse with overheating and the like with linux. I can only just get it working with Ubuntu 10.10 (2.6.36).

Won't be buying a Toshiba laptop again.

Johnboy1951

Nulty wrote: »

I tried Ubuntu 11.10 (3.0.12/15) cause I had the live iso there. I'm not going to bother trying anymore cause I've got a Toshiba laptop that is a pain in the arse with overheating and the like with linux. I can only just get it working with Ubuntu 10.10 (2.6.36).

Won't be buying a Toshiba laptop again.

Is this a problem with Linux or with the distro you have been using?

Is the problem there with other different distros?

I have a Toshiba laptop and it does not appear to over heat ..... maybe I am not working it hard enough

Nulty

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Is this a problem with Linux or with the distro you have been using?

Is the problem there with other different distros?

I have a Toshiba laptop and it does not appear to over heat ..... maybe I am not working it hard enough

Not really sure tbh. I've tried only Ubuntu. 10.10 i686 - which works no problem. But with 11.04 and 11.10 amd64 it puts the heat up to 70/80 centigrade with out too much effort. Memtest86 overheats my laptop to shutdown temperatures. I've tried all the grub option tricks like acpi_osi=Linux but I don't know what the problem is exactly so that makes it hard to determine a solution. All I know is that Toshiba laptops quite often have compatibility issues with Linux.

Johnboy1951

I haven't tried any of the Ubuntu variants or clones on this Tosh so I cannot make comment on them.
I can only say that I have seen no problems with the Tosh I have here while running Linux.

Nulty

Isn't it the kernel that manages the power management of the laptop? What difference would running my laptop with the same kernel and a different distro have? Little I would have thought but then I'm used to being wrong

Johnboy1951

Nulty wrote: »

Isn't it the kernel that manages the power management of the laptop? What difference would running my laptop with the same kernel and a different distro have? Little I would have thought but then I'm used to being wrong

I guess the 'capability' may be built in to the kernel ..... but is it used correctly? .... and that is not even considering different kernels and different patches applied by different distros. Not all kernels are equal

Are there no user level power management apps available?

On the other hand maybe I have just been lucky with this Tosh

Nulty

I'll start a new thread in the Unix forum. It might be more relevant to this particular subject.