[rob86]

I want to try out another distro (OpenSuse, I guess for no particular reason), I already have Ubuntu and WinXP installed. if I install a second Linux Distro, will it just show up in the grub boot menu or will it take over and cause a lot of headaches?

[truefusion]

It should show up in the GRUB menu since GRUB searches through each partition looking for specific operating system information. But keep in mind that OpenSuSE or whatever distro you install will overwrite the MBR. I haven't had more than one Linux distro installed on the same system (except through a virtual machine), so i do not know of the conflicts that may come from removing the distro that installed files into the MBR.

[mahesh2k]

Never tried it for long time and so i can't comment on how good is linux dual boot. It maybe a diversion for this topic. but like windows behavior for dual boot. how linux performs and is there any issue in terms of performance or anything that people earlier faced like windows.

how linux performs when two or more distros are installed ?

[k_nitin_r]

Hi!

I believe the other Linux installation should create a new grub menu that lists both Windows XP and the older Linux installation, though most installers give you an option of letting you configure the existing grub loader manually. However, if you are installing Microsoft Windows 7, after installing Linux, the Windows 7 bootloader will not list Linux in the boot options.

One of the benefits of having multiple Linux installations is that they can all share the same swap space so all you need is a separate root partition for each install. You might even be able to install programs once and use them across distributions. When you are logged in as a regular user, instead of a root user, most software installs within your home folder so you can move it to a location that is accessible (set the filesystem permissions to allow read access, and write access, if necessary, so save user preferences, and any other files that the software might need to create) by all of the Linux distributions.

[Quatrux]

Why not try a live CD first to see how it works?

Personally, I moved from dual booting to virtual machines, using something like virtual box is very comfortable if your computer has a lot of RAM, the only issue usually is with drivers, for example, you can't make a bigger resolution for the window of virtual OS, but of course, it depends what you want to do with it, usually a virtual machine is enough for me

When installing another OS, usually try to not make everything default, as it may overwrite your current OS, at least people have this problem most often.

[Rael IAK]

I'm still pretty well new to Linux but from everything I've heard installing another Linux distro on your hard drive should work ok (assuming you have the hard drive space).

One thing I know from personal experience as well as warnings from Debian, if you want a dual boot system, install the non-Linux operating systems FIRST. My Windows XP recently crashed so I erased and reinstalled it only to find I had lost access to Debian Lenny (my Linux partition). Partition Magic tells me my Linux partition is full which I know it's not close to being so when I get some time I need to reinstall that as well.

So if you try installing another Linux distro and things don't work out and you have to reinstall everything, make sure you do the Windows installation 1st.

Using a virtual machine as Quatrux suggested might be a good way to go initially to see how you like OpenSuse. My personal experiences with Live CDs is that they are OK for giving you a feel for what a distro looks like and how the desktop environment works but they don't have enough functionality to tell you if it's a "keeper".

Good luck. I don't mean to insult anyone's intelligence here but if you are going to mess with your hard drive remember to make backups of all your data files before doing so. I still forget on occasion