Geoffrey wrote:
Felix Miata wrote:
I won't have to recheck anything. All you need do is read an ancient IBM OS/2 manual. My oldest one is a bit new, 1993 for version 2.1.
This is ludicrous.
What's ludicrous is refusing to follow a sensible lead by the company that created the subject matter in the first place. IBM called it "dual boot" to distinguish that installation type from multiboot, where one finds the expected two *or more* operating systems installed to different partitions. When OS/2 was first developed, it was intended to be an upgrade path for DOS users. Dual boot was created in part to ease the transition, to provide some comfort to those in fear of giving up DOS for a new OS. Also, the earliest versions of OS/2 didn't have bulletproof DOS support, and booting DOS was necessary for running certain unsupported DOS software, such as some games, and later, M$ Windoze 3.0 on OS/2 versions that didn't include M$ Windoze support.
You're basing your definition on a document regarding OS/2?
Just like basing a number of other PC standard terms upon those used by IBM when it created the original IBM PC and IBM PC-AT upon which the industry standardized the clones. IBM coined the terms, and the industry followed along.
Since when does such a reference define a term? I've seen discussions regarding dual-boot and multi-boot regarding PCs for as long as your OS/2 reference.
You've been dual booting since the late '80's, when IBM conceived the concept of two different operating systems co-existing on the same PC partition?
dual-boot has always
Always is a long time, predating and outliving you.
been in reference to a PC booting two OSs. Multi-boot has always been in reference to a PC which boots two or more OSs.
Then how do you distinguish the two? If you don't, why don't you? As you say, multi-boot is two or more. Why not stick to using the one term, like the Linux howto title?
Dualboot/Multiboot terms don't carry any definitive indicator as to the actual location of the OSs on the drive/partition. Boot is short for bootstrap defined as 'loading and initializing the operating system.' Dual/multi defines a quantity.
Dual is correct only for exactly two, while multi is correct for any integer greater than one. Placing Win98 and WinXP and SuSE 8.2 and Mandrake 9.1 on the same system is not dual boot. Even sharing only W2K and SuSE 9.0 on a system is more sensibly called multi than dual, because it doesn't magically change when as so often happens the third OS or additional are added, such as when the next beta distro or win version is added to the system and the existing needs to be preserved as fallback to survive the beta period, or rather than as beta simply to compare in order to choose a survivor. The terms are ancient convention, like the modern convention for locating particular types of files in particular directories. It isn't necessary to place particular files in particular directories, but following convention makes a lot of things easier.
Feel free to use your own definition as you see fit, but don't assume
I use it because it makes sense, and because it's a fine old convention coined by the originator of the hardware genre, without which none of us would be here.
you can force it upon others because of an antiquated document on a has been OS.
So has been that its latest version is newer than XP. Major banks still use it, and probably your favorite ATM, things with little tolerance for anything that isn't rock solid. -- "The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of governmental power." General Douglas MacArthur Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/partitioningindex.html