Can't you configure the grub manually. I know OpenSuse lets you configure the GRUB. If you install this "belinux" you may be able to reconfigure the grub and reformat the partition if it goes wrong. But I think the GRUB should pick up the old boot paths.

As i said, i dont think belenix will let you

I dont even know if uses grub (may use btx as its UNIX based, not linux based)

Well then which distro is the most stable and at the same time helps in learning more about the linux ...?

from what i've read you already have fedora installed? is there some reason this doesn't satisfy your requirements?

yes i have installed fedora , its just that many people dont use it much (i dont know how far its true n i dont know why ) .
besides its got a lot of GUI which doesnt help me knowing Linux from the scratch .
i would be glad if there some distro of Linux exist which helps in learning the stuff from the rock bottom .

Slackware?

Its the most unix-like version of linux
Most config is text file based, and no easy package management

i would love to try that , besides i just got a mail from the belinix developer when i asked about the GRUB stuff . n this is wat i was told in return .

BeleniX also uses Grub so you can mumti-boot. However the installer
does not yet detect all other partitions, so you will need to note down
the Grub boot entries from the menu.lst file in Fedora and then add
them into BeleniX's menu.lst (/rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst) by hand.
well i could nt much comprehend from that .
well does this mean that i have to configure the grub manually or its best to run ot from live cd..?

There is a difference between putting a boot loader in the Master Boot Record (MBR, first 512 sector/blocks?) and putting it on a partition.

In my old multi-boot environments, which I have not done in a little over a year so a little foggy, I would create an ext2 /boot partition as the first partition of the drive and install GRUB [menu] there and to the MBR. (Red Hat had the best GRUB version for me at the time, SuSE's never installed correctly for some reason) After this initial GRUB install to the MBR, I would either tell the next install not to install a boot loader or have it install its boot loader to its root (/) partition.

Aside from that initial GRUB install, no other install was permitted to touch the MBR. All other installs were in the GRUB menu as 'chainloader +1'. This allowed chaining multiple boot loaders and creating some rather in-depth menu structures.

GRUB can boot anything. Linux, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD - anything. Please note that GRUB is for the x86 arch and is NOT EFI capable (at least, not as of a year ago) - so your operating system must work on a GRUB-capable arch.

Well there r lot of things i didnt know.
finally coming to the conclusion that , i must build linux from scratch to fetch these concepts thanks Stylish.

Hello Rahul,

You say u have a 250GB HD? This seems quite more than sufficient to install a couple of OS's. Why not try using VMware to create VMs (although there are a couple more which offer similar solutions like Virtual PC, Virtual Box, and all are FREE!) That way if you decide tomorrow u would like to test-drive some OS all u'd need is to create a VM. This will eliminate the woes you currently have.

A solution to your problem is to ur partition woes is to burn a knoppix live cd. You can get it here: http://ftp.free.fr/mirrors/download....g.org/knoppix/. The software i find particularly useful is gparted. Others are drawn to QTparted .. nevertheless, there are loads of how-to docs on the net.

From past experiences, when you go beyond dual or triple boots it starts to get a bit complicated. However, if this is your fancy stick to an already installed Bootloader like GRUB and assume this to be the default. Other OS installs may propose installing their bootloaders - DON'T.

Hopefully, this would present a couple of options to explore ...