Boot Loaders for win/linux

[7D8]

hi, I would like to run win 7 and debian from same hdd but don't want to run a virtualized OS. Can you give me some options and opinions on boot loaders and/or OS installation order?

 

[Siriann]

I've found that installing Windows first is the best way to go. As for boot loaders, either I forgot that I installed one or I didn't have one when I had a BT4/Win7 dual boot. I'm pretty sure all I did was install the OS's on separate partitions and whenever I booted my laptop would ask which partition to boot to.

 

[Celegorm]

If you do windows first, I've never had a linux/unix distro not pick up the windows install properly. It's always been a lot of work to do it the other way around though.

 

[7D8]

interesting. I also have ubuntu and win xp and win98 running on an old laptop and I installed ubuntu last. boot loader seems to work fine. I was curious if there is a better way. I also have Acronis disk manager, which I acquired a while back, but not sure if that ads any extra overhead. I'm not running it, bit I am debating on installing it.

 

[Martin Weis]

I remembered i used a full-featured free boot manager XOSL for multibooting. If you want to try it then back up all your data and before anything else read FAQ on XOSL web. We do not recommend to use multibooting in our computer servis so i do not provide my experince with it but you can try it.

 

[Dngrsone]

If you do windows first, I've never had a linux/unix distro not pick up the windows install properly. It's always been a lot of work to do it the other way around though.

Your wording is a tad confusing.

What is being said here (and I concur) is that Linux distributions are very good at recognizing Windows installs and including them in their bootloader. In the case of Ubuntu, that would be grub.

 

[7D8]

hmm. in my case I had win98 installed, than win xp an last ubuntu. ubuntu picked up both os's just fine.

 

[The_Lucas]

Yeah, it's easy. Just install Debian on it's own partition and it should detect any other installations of other OSs.

 

[wulbs]

I hope you will consider my little solution:

Install windows OS, then install VMware to your windows machine, in your VMware install linux.

 

[Dngrsone]

I hope you will consider my little solution:

Install windows OS, then install VMware to your windows machine, in your VMware install linux.

All well and fine if you don't intend on spending a lot of time in Linux... I actually had Win XP in VMware on Ubuntu, because I only needed to use Win for a few minutes every month.