Dual means exactly 2 bootable operating systems. Multiboot means more than one bootable operating system. Once you have more than two installed, you don't have dual boot. On 2012/03/14 14:19 (GMT-0400) Dennis Gallien composed:
it is probably easier to use Ubuntu to control the boot since it already controls the machine.
It may be more expedient, but if you actually want to understand and control your system's booting, you might rather stick with Grub Legacy, regardless which is already in control. Grub2: 1-depends on an installed OS for installation, file hosting and management 2-is larger and far more powerful & complex 3-docs strongly recommend against installing anywhere except MBR Installation. MBR installation is easily (almost guaranteed to be) broken by installation of additional OS(es) 4-supports installation to RAID and more that Grub Legacy doesn't 5-Prefers to store data on boot track sectors above the MBR that other OS and/or utilities may be using Grub Legacy: 1-doesn't care where it's "installed", except for needing /boot/grub for a few small files 2-can be understood and managed by mere mortals even from its boot shell 3-can have its files installed to any supported filesystem whether or not any /etc lives there 4-can readily boot a system via its shell when its menu is broken or missing (likely possible from Grub 2 by anyone who can figure out how) An upthread statement was made that openSUSE cannot detect Grub2. I think that's misleading, if not technically incorrect. I think it does detect it, but it simply has not as of 12.1 been programmed to do anything with what it found. Because of the massive increase in complexity over Grub Legacy, incorporating it into YaST, perl-Bootloader and related installation modules is a complex process requiring a lot of resources that had not yet been available before the current dev cycle (12.2). There's no technical reason for Grub Legacy and Grub2 not to exist on the same machine. However, by putting whatever Grub the OS being installed defaults to _ONLY_ on its / or /boot partition, maintenance of another OS will not corrupt it. Installing openSUSE after *buntu and putting the openSUSE Grub only on the MBR guarantees the next *buntu Grub update process will make openSUSE unbootable until steps are taken in *buntu to boot openSUSE using *buntu's Grub only. IMO the best place for any controlling Grub is on a primary partition, because no foreign installation process will corrupt it without doing more damage than just to Grub. I _never_ put Grub on any MBR. I always install the default grub to a /boot or / partition. I don't necessarily mount the partition containing Grub and able to boot on /boot. In many cases I expressly do not, preferring to manage menu.lst myself, keeping it away from installation and update scripts. I have dozens of multiboot machines, most with more than 3 installed operating systems. There is no single right way with bootloaders and multiboot. There's as much art to it as science. The best choice for anyone new to multiboot is probably to use whichever boot loader has the best support for your preferred OS. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org