Re: Booting Linux and Win 98

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

Cameron Matheson wrote:
> 
> Hey,
> 
> Thanks for the help with booting Win98 and Linux everyone.  When my dad
> brings the computer home tommorrow, this should be pretty easy.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Cameron Matheson
> 

Alternatively (to the suggestions to multi-boot using LILO), you can
also tweak CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT in Win98 to produce a menu to
choose from, booting into Linux by using LOADLIN.

I've got my home computer set up this way, and my mom's computer set up
to multi-boot using LILO. They both have a 2-choice menu; with the
Windows method you can use the up/down arrows to make the choice; with
the LILO method you have to type the menu item, which I've tweaked to be
a simple "1" for Linux or "2" for Windows, like:

 Please press '1' or '2', then press <ENTER>:
   1) Start Linux
   2) Start Windows

They both automatically default to the preferred OS after so many
seconds (7, I think).

Using LILO is a bit cleaner if you boot into Linux most of the time
since you don't boot into DOS first, but using the Windows method seems
a little less like DOS-in-the-early-years (if I may be permitted to
describe it that way).

And yet one more alternative: if you have the horsepower, get VMWARE and
install Win98 on top of Linux. That way you never have to reboot and you
have both OSes up at the same time. Click, you're in Linux; click,
you're in Win98. Oops, Win98 just crashed? No problem, reboot it and
click back to Linux and continue working in WordPerfect and browsing the
web with Netscape while Win98 reboots.

This is the way my work computer is. I originally had it set up to
multi-boot before I discovered VMWARE, and I left the original Windows
setup on its own partition as a backup. That's been a year or so, and I
never use it; it's just wasting space, even though I use Windows daily
(for our work order system that requires Windows -- from Applix no
less!).