Well i have a windows xp and linux (fedora 7) partition . and now i have found a new distro of linux which is called Belinix .
its not very famous but has a lot to offer .
Well my problem is i want to install and run belinix , but i already have this partition and have no idea how to change i.

all ideas are welcomed and besides i would be glad if you could recommend ne other version of linux .

I personally use ubuntu. There should be tools in xp and fedora which would allow you to partition your hard disk. It should also be possible while installing Belinix.

In my case, I had my HDD with only vista running. I reduced the size of the partition and installed ubuntu on the unallocated space.

assuming that somehow i have install . will it detect fedora or windows in that case....?

Can you provide more information?

You have a hard drive of X size (GB/TB). The partitions are as follows..?

Example:
250 GB HD
50 MB /boot ext2 partition
50 GB / ext3 partition (Ubuntu)
rest - Windows XP

fine .
i have a 250 gb hard disk .
only around 10 - 12 gb i have given to fedora 7 and the rest allocated for windows .
50 gb - c drive
86.3 - d drive
85.9 gb - e drive

now i want to install belinix on top of it .
it just doesnt feel feasible. ne ingenious idea to accomplish my i wouldnt say ridiculous but sounds like that .

as long as you have your bootloader configured correctly it should detect all OSs fine. i am no expert on this, so i wouldn't know how you would go about this specifically, but i would nearly assume belinix would simply add to an existing grub install.

perhaps somebody can confirm / deny this?

belenix is pretty buggy, its solaris based so i think it uses a different bootloader and/or filesystem to linux

Looking at your drive, you already have four (4) partitions. If these are PRIMARY partitions, then you cannot create any more. I am unsure if Windows knows how to properly use Logical/Extended partitions (Win98 did not).

If you have reached the four (4) primary partition limits, you will have to delete a partition. It may be possible to delete one and create an extended/logical partition in its place - but I believe non-primary partitions must be at the end of the partition table. (anyone know for sure?)

So, if you have the following:
1 - Linux
2 - C
3 - D
4 - E

You will have to either install over partition 1:Linux or delete 4:E and create an Extended/Logical partition in its place to accommodate more partitions and operating systems.

If you are using GRUB, you will be able to boot any OS on your system if properly installed. I am unsure about other bootloaders, but os/filesystem rarely matters - just the arch and boot loader options.

yeah i get wat u said . but the point is if i make the the E drive empty and then repartion it and finally install the belinix distro in it .At the time of booting Will belinix distro detect the fedora 7 which is already present and the windows xp ....?

yeah i get wat u said . but the point is if i make the the E drive empty and then repartion it and finally install the belinix distro in it .At the time of booting Will belinix distro detect the fedora 7 which is already present and the windows xp ....?

I do not know belinix and cannot answer your question. Sorry.

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.linuxtag.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 ...

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