was: Dual boot linices?

[Bill McGonigle]

On Oct 21, 2008, at 17:02, bruce.labitt at autoliv.com wrote:

> Why are these linices hostile to each other?

They don't agree on the best version and file layout for their  
bootloaders.  Bootloading and grub especially are among the most  
harrowing aspects of running a Linux machine.  There's room for  
improvement, but nobody seems to be taking on the task.  Last I  
looked grub 3 was a rewrite that didn't support the most basic of  
needs.  Maybe the idea needs to be rethunk.  Not the least of the  
problems is dealing with the IBM PC BIOS/DOS constraints.  rEFIt  
seems more elegant (it's for EFI machines).

>   Philosophical question, I
> sort of understand your explanation.  Many linux distros are  
> tolerant to a
> dual boot with windows, but not as it seems, to other linux distros?

Jarod suggested the same thing as you do with Windows - chain load  
the boot loaders.  That is, grub-1 loads grub-2, like with Windows  
grub loads the Windows bootloader.

Maybe LSB will address this somehow one day.  I agree it would be  
nice to have trivial coexistence.

-Bill

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