BootIt Vs other Boot Managers

[kamicota]

OOPS what happens to BootIt when I take out windows 98 will the Floppy still work Colin

[b2cm]

My previous post had to do with special primaries that I lost ---when I used other partition utilities and modified my disk---and could not recover those special primaries even with reinstalling BootItNG. It doesn't apply to your case.If BootItNG is installed in the Win98 partition, you can use your floppy to reinstall it 98 (on a partition of its own) when you delete your Win98 partition.Just play it safe with BootItNG. Just say NO when it asks to set up more than 4 primary partitions. What is important is that you devote most of your disk to a special primary partition called "extended" and then create as many "logical partitions" or "volumes" within that "extended" partition. As you create these "logical partitions" choose Native Linux (ext2) as the file system. Whenever you install your Linux OSes, direct each to install in one of these logical partitions. If you want to use BootItNG as your boot manager, always see to it that during the install the boot information of the distro is installed on logical partition's superblock. I will post here later a suggested setup.

[kamicota]

Boy B2cmThat's a little over the top for me to comprehend or am I too worn out with all these trials that I'm dealing with every day in the transition to LINUXI Have BootIt's floppy and hope that is all I need when Windows 98SE is byebye's cos isn't that from dosColin

[b2cm]

BootItNG will be all you would need. When you're feeling a little bit better, please read below.After you delete the Win98 partition (this would be hda1 or C), restart and boot with BootItNG floppy. At BootItNG install, choose NO to "enable more than four primary partitions". Also choose to install BootItNG to its own (dedicated) partition, directing it to use the unformated disk space where the Win98 partition once was. (This is the 1st primary partition on your disk.)To set up other partitions:*Create hda2 (2nd primary partition) as a "Linux native" partition. Let this be your Xandros2 partition. (A 6 gigabytes size would be a generous allocation.) During the install of Xandros2 this will be reformatted as ReiserFS. *Create hda3 (3rd primary partition) as a "Linux native" partition. Let this be your Suse partition.*Your fourth primary partition already exists. It is a special primary partition called "extended partition". Within it "logical partitions" or "volumes" can be created. Your existing extended partition already contains 5 logical partitions:*The partition (hda5 or D) that contains your Windows program files*The partition (hda6 or E) that your Windows used for its swap file*The partition (hda7) formatted as "Linux swap" that all your Linux partitions use or mount as its swap file partition.*The partition (hda8) that you use for either Xandros or Suse*The partition (hda9) that you use for either Xandros or SuseThe partitions that you do not anymore need are hda5 and hda6 (because you've wiped Win98 off the disk). You should delete both and create in its place a Store partition (where you can safekeep your ISOs and other files). When you create this partition, remember that your hda8 now becomes hda7, and hda9 becomes hda8. After you install Xandros to hda2 and Suse to hda3 (your 2 main Linux partitions), use hda7 and hda8 as partitions for experimenting modifications to Xandros and Suse, i.e. updates and upghrades, software installs. You can also use the 2 partitions to installing and test-run other distros.

[ebrke]

If you have to reinstall BootIt, when it asks if you want to install to its own partition, say yes. It's much easier to control everything that way.Edit: Oops, b2cm already told you that. Sorry.

[kamicota]

Hi Elizabeth thanx Just pasted the info into OpenOffice in readiness when I have set up the Epson c80 ( HOPEFULLY) and it is time for ByeBye's win98SEHave just Pulled mandrake 10 Beta1 Boot CD out of the garbage and wondered what the pro's and cons were about just using BootIt NG or trig to using Drake during Install and then Quitting ( Mandrake 10 beta hung up at Initializig periphperals too) Throwing another Curve Ball out to the forum again aren't I???Colin

[ebrke]

BootIt is not an easy thing to work with, but it does its work well. It's worth printing out the manual so you can read and re-read it as necessary (and if you're like me, that's going to be often!). b2cm is correct that it's easiest to handle when you choose the "limit primaries" option. If you don't choose that at install time, you can do it later from the Settings section in the BootIt GUI.The way I use BootIt is to let it handle the booting. I create my partitions through BootIt before the linux install. You don't install the linux bootloader (GRUB, LILO) to the MBR but to another partition (/boot or /). Before the install, you also create a boot menu item in BootIt and point to the partition where you're going to install the linux bootloader. When you choose a boot menu item from BootIT at startup, BootIt will invoke the linux bootloader item and away you go. Theoretically, the next time you install a distro, you do the same thing, creating a new boot menu item in BootIt pointing to the partition where you're going to install the linux bootloader for the new distro. I haven't used this on more than one distro at a time yet, but I think the process would hold up under those conditions. I kind of like the idea of having an "outside" boot manager, but that's just me, and I'm sure that others here with long-time linux experience have equal success using the linux tools.