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Boot Linux, BSD, and OS X from Vista 225

Posted by kdawson from the by-your-bootstraps dept.
An anonymous reader writes, "NeoSmart Technologies has just released EasyBCD 1.5, complete with support for Vista, Windows NT/2k/XP, and Windows 9x/ME. EasyBCD 1.5 adds experimental support for dual-booting any of these along with Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD — straight from the Windows Vista bootloader without any additional configuration needed!" From the article: "Windows Vista's new bootmanager is a double-edged sword. It's one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence, and a far cry from the very limiting boot.ini of legacy Windows operating systems. But it overwrites the MBR without a second thought, and doesn't provide any means for users of alternate operating systems and boot managers to use their old system. That's where EasyBCD 1.5 comes in!" EasyBCD 1.5 is free.
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Boot Linux, BSD, and OS X from Vista More

Boot Linux, BSD, and OS X from Vista

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  • BCD? (Score:4, Funny)

    by convolvatron ( 176505 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @02:53PM (#16457539)
    i've always found bcd quite easy. just throw away a large fraction of the legitimate encodings...wait, what?

  • Surprise, surprise. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eideewt ( 603267 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @02:57PM (#16457589)

    "But it overwrites the MBR without a second thought...."

    Well, who would have expected Microsoft to do that?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 )
      It's nothing new really. When I used to install Win98 as an afterthought alongside a Linux distro, I could be sure the lilo mbr would be trashed, and I made sure I had a boot floppy handy to boot back into linux and reinstall lilo.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Eideewt ( 603267 )
        Tell me about it. I would absolutely love to install XP alongside Linux because there are a few games I'd like to play on my newish video card, but I sure don't want to mess with Windows's brainless installer.
        • I have no problem with XP and Linux alongside each other. Install Windows first, then install Linux second. Windows never knows Linux even exists. I even have Windows on one hard drive and Linux on another. I didn't have to do anything, GRUB did it all.
          • And for the record, if you have a livecd, you can always boot from that, chroot to your actual linux install (after playing with mount a bit) and then re-run grub or lilo. Or, you could make a grub floppy, so you can reinstall grub to your MBR afterwards. Or, you could install your boot loader to your linux partition, instead of to the MBR, and Windows will very happily boot it. Or, you could do the above, but use boot commander (or similar) to change the active partition and boot from it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Eideewt ( 603267 )
            Yes, but it's a little late for that now.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by slamb ( 119285 ) *

        It's nothing new really. When I used to install Win98 as an afterthought alongside a Linux distro, I could be sure the lilo mbr would be trashed, and I made sure I had a boot floppy handy to boot back into linux and reinstall lilo.

        Consider yourself lucky. When I installed Windows XP alongside Linux, it trashed my entire hard drive [advogato.org]. That was the last time I ever installed Windows. The system simply can not be trusted. I use Linux and OS X exclusively now.

        • Re:Surprise, surprise. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by HoboMaster ( 639861 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @04:29PM (#16459203)
          I've had Red Hat (years ago) completely corrupt my HD while shutting down. Obviously I should never use any Linux distro ever again!
          • Haha, I like how when you point out the fallibility of this guy's statement, you get modded down. Proof the slashdot moderation system is working! If Windows eats your partition table, you can be pretty sure that either you are having problems with LBA modes and translation, you botched the partitioning in the first place, or you botched the part of partitioning that you do in windows.
            • Using anecdotal evidence that bashes windows is +3. Using anecdotal evidence that bashes Linux is trolling.

              Funniest part? I use Ubuntu all the time.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by slamb ( 119285 ) *

            I've had Red Hat (years ago) completely corrupt my HD while shutting down. Obviously I should never use any Linux distro ever again!

            That's a horrible bug, but did they fix it or just document in a KnowledgeBase that "sometimes it completely corrupts your HD; this is normal". If the latter, then I could certainly understand why you'd share my desire to never use the system in question again. But I doubt it - I would be shocked to hear that attitude from Linux developers.

            [in a later post] Using anecdotal

            • I have installed windows on a linux machine many times. Not once has it destroyed the hard drive. MBR, yes. Linux partition, no. All I had to do is go drop a new boot-loader on the machine. Something went wrong, that sucks (a lot), I understand. But that's hardly grounds to declare an entire OS "crap."

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by slamb ( 119285 ) *

                I have installed windows on a linux machine many times. Not once has it destroyed the hard drive. MBR, yes. Linux partition, no. All I had to do is go drop a new boot-loader on the machine. Something went wrong, that sucks (a lot), I understand. But that's hardly grounds to declare an entire OS "crap."

                It's not that "something went wrong" one time out of many. If you follow a specific, reasonable sequence of actions, the contents of your hard drive will be destroyed 100% of the time. Furthermore, the maker

        • I've run with multiple partitions in several different configurations since XP came out. I've never seen that happen. XP is currently on the second partition of my first disk. I believe it told me during setup that it would be formatting the second partition as NTFS (system), first partition as NTFS (boot).

          Now that I've checked the KB to confirm what I had recalled, I'm positive that it asks for confirmation for both partitions. See kb313348 [microsoft.com], step 11:

          Note If you deleted and created a new System partition, b

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by slamb ( 119285 ) *

            Note If you deleted and created a new System partition, but you are installing Windows XP on a different partition, you will be prompted to select a file system for both the System and startup partitions.

            I didn't modify the partition table during Windows XP installation, so this KB article is not relevant. What I did was try to install to an existing system with an unformatted NTFS partition as part of the following layout:

            ...umm, slashdot's lameness filter won't let me post it here, so I've updated the

    • I've got a MSI mobo (K7N2G-ILSR) that for some odd reason requires the DDO from Western Digital to be loaded to see my full 250GB. Since Vista replaces the boot sector with a new one it trashed the DDO and only showed the drive as around 32GB. :( I sure didn't expect it, especially since XP plays nicely with DDO. I think I'll wait for a new computer before trying it again.

      Jonah HEX
      • Honestly, if you have any hardware that requires DDO, you should get rid of it immediately and get something better. I just had to go through a fight with it to get XP to install on someone's computer and it was just stupid. You could probably just get a PCI ATA card for ten bucks that would do the job, though, since they have their own BIOS. Well, make sure you get one with its own BIOS, that is :)
    • Why does Windows setup lay down a new boot sector? http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/12/ 20/505887.aspx [msdn.com]

  • Overwrite MBR == Urgent Patch (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mpapet ( 761907 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @02:58PM (#16457607) Homepage
    This one won't make it to the gold master.

    Kind of like stealing from a Las Vegas casino. Won't happen.
    • You're expecting Vista to act differently than every other Windows version since at least 95? Every one of the damn things overwrite the MBR.

      This is why on multiboot systems I install Grub into the partition rather than the MBR. This way you can keep the Windows MBR and just set the Linux partition as bootable and it works as it's supposed to.

  • Getting lots of OSes running (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gcnaddict ( 841664 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @02:58PM (#16457609)
    I know its possible to boot BSD, Vista, XP, and OSX if you use Grub->>Vista Bootloader->>NTLDR (to load bsd/osx, vista, and XP respectively). However, knowing that I can skip grub (no offense. I just didn't feel comfortable using it) is great news!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Penguin Follower ( 576525 )
      You're not alone! I still use LILO because it's what I've used since 1997, and I'm too lazy to learn GRUB.

      • Re:Getting lots of OSes running (Score:5, Informative)

        by Shawn is an Asshole ( 845769 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @03:27PM (#16458147)
        Grub isn't very difficult to adjust to. I also held out on learning it for a while, but it actually is kinda nice. The thing I really like about it is after making a change (new kernel, boot option, etc) it isn't necessary to reinstall it to the mbr. Just edit menu.lst and it's done.

        Take the 5 minutes to learn it.

        • Re:Getting lots of OSes running (Score:5, Informative)

          by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @04:26PM (#16459167) Homepage Journal
          When you "make install" a new Linux kernel, it makes a symlink /boot/vmlinuz to the new kernel. So you won't even have to edit menu.lst if the boot option is this symlink. Grub also has the nice feature of editing the kernel entry at bootup, so you can go back to the old kernel if necessary.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by rapidweather ( 567364 )
          This box that I am on right now is a dual 200 MMX with 256 MB of RAM, and three hard drives.
          I use Windows 98 "DOS" to make batch files to run loadlin with a nice menu to boot either Windows 98 (not very often), or a selection of window managers in my knoppix remaster (see screenshots). I can use a "knoppix.img" file for ~/, or just do without that, and boot into the default IceWM. Next choice is Fluxbox, then KDE, then twm.
          The Windows 98 desktop has icons for all of that also, and the menu too. So, can jump

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bersl2 ( 689221 )
        Ditto here. Except I finally switched a while ago.

        The GRUB command line is very, very useful.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by misleb ( 129952 )

        You're not alone! I still use LILO because it's what I've used since 1997, and I'm too lazy to learn GRUB.

        LILO can be very finicky and a system can easily become unbootable given bad parameters. An interactive boot shell that is filesystem aware (GRUB) can come in very handy. It is almost like having a real system firmware. Although if LILO works fine, there is probalby no reason to bother switching to GRUB. I mean, how often do you fiddle with boot parameters anyway?

        -matthew

      • You're not alone! I still use LILO because it's what I've used since 1997, and I'm too lazy to learn GRUB.

        grub has one really great feature that got me to switch, besides the fact that just about every linux distribution uses grub now: you can edit the commandline from the boot screen. Just hit "e" and you end up in a readline-equipped editor that allows you to, for example, change your root device, or add "single" to the command line.

        grub also supports booting from more media than lilo does, so I pr

    • What's wrong with GRUB? I'm not offended by you not liking it, but just curious. To me, it doesn't exactly seem perfect and ideal, but it's easy enough to install and use.

      • Re:Getting lots of OSes running (Score:4, Interesting)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @03:16PM (#16457941) Journal
        To me, GRUB seems like insane bloatware. Why do I need something that's so big it needs its own partition just to handle multiboot? The FreeBSD first-stage boot loader is small enough to fit in the MBR. It presents me with a menu of all partitions to boot from (although it does label NTFS partitions as DOS) so I get something a bit like this at boot:
        F1: FreeBSD
        F2: DOS

        F5: Disk 2

        Default: F1
        It defaults to whatever I booted last time. If I nuke all of the partitions on my disk and re-install, it still works, passing off to the OS-specific boot loaders on each partition. It's lightweight, simple, well-tested, and does what I need.

        • Re:Getting lots of OSes running (Score:4, Informative)

          by entrylevel ( 559061 ) <jaundoh@yahoo.com> on Monday October 16, 2006 @04:45PM (#16459535)
          Grub doesn't need an extra parition to boot from. I'm noting that you said the 1st stage BSD bootloader. That would imply that, just like Linux, there is a 2nd stage to the boot loading. The 1st stage of grub fits in the MBR without issue. The 2nd stage is read from your boot partition, which in most modern distros is the same as your root partition. It also happens that is a handy place to put the bootloader config in human-readable form. You might call that bloat, but I call it handy for stuff like single user mode or testing a new kernel without worrying about needing a boot floppy.

          The "last selected OS" is handy, and GRUB can be configured to do this as well, but what if you last selected single user mode, or memtest86? If you reboot your machine remotely, and forget that the last option selected has no network support, you have no way to access the machine. At least with GRUB, you can edit the config and tell it not to do that.

    • Actually, EasyBCD requires Grub to be installed in order to boot Linux.

      Now my problem is, it doesn't want to know what DRIVE I've installed Grub on... so I am doubtful it will work. :/

      • Aha, you have to go edit the Linux entry and set the drive letter (EasyBCD automatically converts it to the device name).
        • Doh, wait, it should remain C:. EasyBCD uses some voodoo and places a file on C: to boot Linux. I can't wait to see the voodoo that magically figures out what partition grub is loaded on.

  • 2 OS's running simultaneously (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Salvance ( 1014001 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @02:59PM (#16457621) Homepage Journal
    I don't see what's so impressive about Vista's bootloader, unless you're simply comparing it to prior MS versions. What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment. Imagine being able to switch back and forth between Linux and Windows simply by hitting a keystroke?

    With the advent of dual core chips and O/S support for these chips, this doesn't seem all that difficult. Isn't Apple already doing it?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by l4m3z0r ( 799504 )

      What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment.

      How is this possible without virtualization of some kind be it hardware or software? Oh wait its not...

    • Imagine being able to switch back and forth between Linux and Windows simply by hitting a keystroke?

      You mean like with this [vmware.com]? no wait, Vista's EULA won't let you do that unless you buy the pricier Vista...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Daniel_Staal ( 609844 )
      Nope, Apple isn't doing it, and neither is anyone else. And they won't, not like you are describing, and here's why: Someone needs to be in charge of the memory, the disks, and all the rest. That's the whole point of the OS. Therefore, only one OS can run on a computer at a time.

      You could get around that with some fancy firmware to save the state to some storage device and load it up again, but it really isn't worth it. Virtualization does a better job for most of what you would want to do: Have a base
      • Someone needs to be in charge of the memory, the disks, and all the rest. That's the whole point of the OS. Therefore, only one OS can run on a computer at a time.

        Or the hypervisor in many mainframes, IBM POWER5 systems, or anything running Xen. The next generation of GPUs are going to include save and restore state operations, and newer x86 systems finally come with an IOMMU, meaning that a Hypervisor will soon be able to share everything, including the GPU, between machines.

        The DirectX 10 driver mod

    • Running multiple OSes simultaneously without virtualization or emulation? Where/how is Apple doing this?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )
        He's probably thinking of Rosetta and/or X11, or before that Classic for running Mac OS 9 and earlier apps under Mac OS X.

        Hmm, I wonder if an Intel Mac could be coaxed into running Mac OS 9 under Classic under Rosetta, and if so whether you could run 68k binaries in it.
        • Hmm, I wonder if an Intel Mac could be coaxed into running Mac OS 9 under Classic under Rosetta, and if so whether you could run 68k binaries in it.

          It can't and it doesn't. See Apple's Universal Binaries reader (a pdf). If you're a developer, it's time to recompile; fortunately Carbon isn't going anywhere. [apple.com]

        • Re:2 OS's running simultaneously (Score:4, Interesting)

          by snuf23 ( 182335 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @04:26PM (#16459173)
          "He's probably thinking of Rosetta and/or X11, or before that Classic for running Mac OS 9 and earlier apps under Mac OS X."

          None of which represent running "2 OSs at the same time without virtualization".

          Rosetta: a PowerPC emulation layer for running PowerPC binaries on Intel. I don't know the details but I would assume that system calls to Mac OS X APIs are presented to the native Intel OS X components - so the whole thing isn't exactly running in the emulation layer. The OS components being called by the software are running native on Intel.

          X11: A window manager for UNIX. X11 apps running on Mac OS X are still binaries built to run on OS X. The Window manager just handles displaying the GUI elements. This is not running a different OS.

          Classic mode: A form of virtualization. It booted OS 9 in a seperate process under OS X. Similar to how VMWare or Virtual PC work. Probably a bit better in terms of hardware support, because Apple had fixed targets for possible hardware on Apple computers, rather than VMWare which for some devices (video cards) only offers basic support.
        • Hmm, I wonder if an Intel Mac could be coaxed into running Mac OS 9 under Classic under Rosetta, and if so whether you could run 68k binaries in it.

          No, you cannot run Classic under Rosetta. Classic is not just an application running an emulator. It directly hooks into the core OS and touches hardware.
    • With the advent of dual core chips and O/S support for these chips, this doesn't seem all that difficult. Isn't Apple already doing it?

      Dual-core chips have absolutely nothing to do with the ridiculous "multiple OS without virtualization" scenario you are imagining. Yes, it really is "all that difficult", actually more in the line with "impossible".

      And no, Apple isn't doing it. Apple hasn't even stepped a foot in the virtualization bandwagon yet, so I'm wondering where you got that idea. Boot Camp is just a
    • Get two computers and share a monitor.

    • What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment. Imagine being able to switch back and forth between Linux and Windows simply by hitting a keystroke?

      Personally, I'd rather this was done via virtualization. Virtualization allows you to use the most secure OS as the host OS with only it having access to damage the critical parts of your system. The guest OS's can run on top of it and benefit f

  • > It (BCD) is one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence...

    I'm curious if this statement is more than marketing speak. What's so great about BCD?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lixee ( 863589 )
      I'm curious if this statement is more than marketing speak. What's so great about BCD?
      I'm afraid you misunderstood the statement. They're talking about Vista's boot script not BCD. I fail to see what's so great about it though, since it overwrites the MBR "without a second thought".
    • Well it makes it easy to visually convert binary into decimal

      0001 0011 0011 0111

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @02:59PM (#16457639)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Except for the fact that... (Score:5, Informative)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Monday October 16, 2006 @03:06PM (#16457773)
    ...you can't "boot OS X" on non-Apple hardware without:

    1. Breaking Apple's Mac OS X license agreement, which says that Mac OS X is to be run only on Apple-branded computers
    2. Pirating Mac OS X (Intel), since Mac OS X (Intel) is not available as a standalone OS at present
    3. Running a horribly hacked version of Mac OS X, with critical pieces of the system modified, including the kernel
    4. Running Mac OS X in an unupdateable state, since any official Apple software updates that overwrite modified pieces of the hacked version of Mac OS X will break it
    5. Running Mac OS X in a state completely unsupported by its vendor
    6. Possibly violating civil or criminal law in your jurisdiction

    I hope that most people can find at least *one* of the above items that would make them reconsider running Mac OS X (Intel) on a generic PC without paying for it (some will no doubt argue that they should be able to "reuse" PowerPC licenses for Mac OS X in spirit, but the fact is that it's not the same product - that's like saying that you at one time owned one software product from a company that's similar, so you should be able to use this other one/newer version/older version/different version for free). I'm sure others will come up with all sorts of justifications why it's okay.

    But isn't all of the billions of dollars or R&D and hundreds of thousands of manhours invested in Mac OS X worth something? What if their pricing is predicated on what is essentially a good faith agreement that you'll not hack it and run it on non-Apple hardware? Does Apple have ANY say in how they'd prefer it to be used?

    I could go on, of course, but just thought this was worth mentioning.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You keep repeating the same stuff over and over again. Here's the real list

      1. Breaking the law
      2. Having an install which might not work right

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rakishi ( 759894 )
      What exactly IS your point? You've got your head so far Apple's backside you can't even write a coherent argument.

      You state that OS X on non-apple hardware is neither stable nor production quality. Legality in terms of licenses is of little importance for personal use and no sane company would use such an unstable product so your "points" are redundant. As a result it is only viable for those individuals who either lack money or wish to play around with OS X, neither of whom is going to buy a Mac instead.

      So
      • What exactly was incoherent or incorrect about my argument? Specific examples, please.

        Your arguments are the ones that are irrelevant, here. You don't get to decide that using Mac OS X in this fashion benefits Apple, therefore it's okay in the context your own moral or logical framework for people to pirate it and so on. Apple is the entity that gets to decide, and they have.

        It doesn't have anything to do with having anything in anyone's backside.

        Again, I'd love to hear about anything that I said that's inc

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rakishi ( 759894 )
          You don't get to decide that using Mac OS X in this fashion benefits Apple, therefore it's okay in the context your own moral or logical framework for people to pirate it and so on.

          Sure you do, assuming that is your moral or ethical system. Heck that is the definition of what is being done as someone is perfectly free to decide whatever they want to be moral or ethical. The trick comes in convincing other people of that and dealing with any consequences if it doesn't agree with societies morals/ethics/laws.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by joe 155 ( 937621 )
      bad arguement, you make very similar points a lot trying to make them seem new or different. You also ignore fair use, and why we've been getting so annoyed about DRM. If I buy an apple computer that comes with OSX why shouldn't I be able to put that on a different computer is, say, my apple dies? I've paid to use that software on one computer and that's what I'll do... a lot of this other stuff that you mention are just symptoms of this broken system of no fair use - illegal to use software that I've pai
    • Z0MG OH NOES!!!

      Sheesh... get a fucking life Dave. Anyone with as much emotional investment in any company as you seem to have in Apple has some sort of serious emotional problems.

      • So, are you saying that there was anything incorrect in my post, or...?

        Or, that this isn't relevant given the fact that the title and summary of this article makes it appear that you can just boot "OS X" on non-Apple hardware, when that isn't anything close to even being the case, and the only way you can use OS X on non-Apple hardware is still with the hacks that have existed ever since Mac OS X has been out on Intel, and will continue to exist indefinitely?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )
      ...you can't "boot OS X" on non-Apple hardware without:

      1. Breaking Apple's Mac OS X license agreement, which says that Mac OS X is to be run only on Apple-branded computers

      Contact your local cattle rancher?

      2. Pirating Mac OS X (Intel), since Mac OS X (Intel) is not available as a standalone OS at present

      Who says you need to buy it as a standalone OS to possess an install disk? Wanting to install Mac OS X on a PC does not preclude ownership of an Intel-based Mac. You can even balance out the seats by unins

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ettlz ( 639203 )

      But isn't all of the billions of dollars or R&D and hundreds of thousands of manhours invested in Mac OS X worth something?

      What about all the manhours the FreeBSD and OpenBSD engineers put into their product, so their code could be co-opted by others (like, ooh! Apple) and sold on with restrictive terms? What about all the manhours Red Hat and SuSE and the Debian project and Ubuntu and many others into a whole host of free Linux distros? Aren't they worth something, or does it have to come attached to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by snuf23 ( 182335 )
        "I think about as much say as the BSD folks claim. Or that the GPL folks do, for that matter."

        I hate to support the Apple ranting guy BUT you are missing the point. People who release code under the BSD or GPL licenses give up certain rights deliberately. They could have released it as proprietary code initially but they CHOSE to release it licensed as GPL or BSD. Anyone who willfully releases code under the BSD license and then bitches about it's usage (lawful per the text of the license) is a moron. If yo

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nermal6693 ( 622898 )
      Mac OS X (Intel) is not available as a standalone OS at present

      The retail boxed version of 10.4.7 Server is Intel-compatible.
  • The real props should go to Microsoft for designing a flexible bootmanager and boot-time-application framework that is flexible and firmware independent (x86 BIOS, IA32 EFI, IA64 EFI, x64 EFI).

  • License: Freeware (Score:5, Informative)

    by Benanov ( 583592 ) <brian,kemp&member,fsf,org> on Monday October 16, 2006 @03:17PM (#16457969) Journal
    Downloaded it just to check the license (yeah, I'm odd about this crap)

    It's freeware. Sorta looks like a Creative Commons license, but basically it's just plain old freeware.

    4. Restrictions. The license granted in Section 3 above is expressly made subject to and limited by the following restrictions:
    a. You may distribute the Work only under the terms of this License, and You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) to, this License with every copy of the Work You distribute, and only with the permission of the Licensor & Original Author. You may not offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter or restrict the terms of this License or the recipients' exercise of the rights granted hereunder. You may not sublicense the Work. You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License and to the disclaimer of warranties. You may not distribute the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. The above applies to the Work as incorporated in a Collective Work, but this does not require the Collective Work apart from the Work itself to be made subject to the terms of this License. If You create a Collective Work, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Collective Work any credit as required by clause 4(c), as requested.
    b. You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange of the Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing or otherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided there is no payment of any monetary compensation in connection with the exchange of copyrighted works.
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  • since they maybe able to help me boot linux w/ vista's Bootloader but they can not save their webserver from collapsing under the weight of the slashdot masses. sooo... but without this ... u can still use GRUB or LILO right ?? in the same way as XP/Linux dual boot? I haven't tried it soo just wondering..
  • I'd love to easily run alternative OSes on my home PC alongside Windows XP, but I can't because my hard drive is a SATA-RAID array. I've been unable to find any straightforward way to get bootloaders (such as GRUB) or alternative OSes (such as Linux) to install on, address, and boot from an SATA-RAID array (aka "fakeRAID"). Some limited support is available in Linux using "dmraid", but apparently you have to be a command-line expert with significant Linux-Fu powers to set that up, and all it will allow yo
    • NVRAID seems well-supported by current versions of the kernel. At least, that's my experience with my nForce 570 MCP.

  • Well I just tried it (Score:3, Funny)

    by The MAZZTer ( 911996 ) <megazzt.gmail@com> on Monday October 16, 2006 @04:14PM (#16458955) Homepage

    I had to replace my MBR for it to work, since I had loaded grub into it.

    So I tried to boot into Linux. I must say, I don't remember Linux being a blank screen. I seem to recall it being more interactive...

  • If someone installs fistho over their windows partition on a duel boot system they simply have to use a linux install CD to boot into linux and set grub or lilo back up. I don't remember any windows install not destroying the MBR. I don't remember anyone expecting it to do anything less.

    Boot in rescue mode and mount the linux partition
    fdisk -l
    mount -t partition_type /dev/linux_partition /mnt/sysimage
    chroot /mnt/sysimage
    live distro's

    For grub
    grub-install /dev/first_disk (first_disk = hda or sda. check the
  • Although the blurb explicitly claims that this new bootloader is "more powerful" than NTLDR/boot.ini, in fact it sounds like this new loader is doing the same thing (starting grup/lilo/etc. from the windows boot loader) that people have been doing for ages with NTLDR. Here is an ancient HOWTO [web.cern.ch] on how to do it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by foonf ( 447461 )
      Okay, so that link was the opposite of what I claimed, but this one [morpheus.net] describes the right process.
  • "Windows Vista's new bootmanager is a double-edged sword. It's one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence, and a far cry from the very limiting boot.ini of legacy Windows operating systems. But it overwrites the MBR without a second thought, and doesn't provide any means for users of alternate operating systems and boot managers to use their old system.

    Then it is not necessarily among the most powerful. That is a absic feature among virtually all of the rest. Others do allow you to do that and m
  • Alternatively, you can banish the Vista boot loader to its own partition and boot with Grub. Or, better yet, banish the Vista boot loader together with Vista entirely from your disk.

  • Boot Record Mastery (Score:3, Informative)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @06:32PM (#16461143) Homepage Journal
    " Boot Linux, BSD, and OS X from Vista"

    That's not "from" Vista, it's despite Vista.

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