Quad-boot overshoot

In my geeky haze, I forgot to blog about my triumph last week: I set up the $15 Laptop, a Compaq Armada 7770dmt (233 MHZ Pentium II with a whopping 64 MB RAM) to triple-boot Windows 2000, Puppy Linux 2.14 and Damn Small Linux 3.3.

I managed to do them in order, so first Puppy (a traditional, not frugal install due to the low RAM) installed GRUB for me, and then when I added DSL (frugal install), a new GRUB bootloader was added, and that one did pick up Windows (and DSL, of course) but not Puppy. So I found /boot/grub/menu.lst in the Puppy install, copied the code over to DSL's GRUB, and I was able to boot Windows, Puppy and DSL from the GRUB screen.

It was a geek-in-training triumph.

So yesterday I figure I can perform the same magic on the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, the 1 GHz VIA C3 processor/256 MB RAM box that I use to test distros. I have three hard drives that I can switch in and out via a long IDE cable that allows the drives to sit on the desk next to the thin client box.

I had my Ubuntu 6.06 LTS/Windows 2000 drive hooked up. So first I add a frugal-istall of Puppy 2.14. I manage to get Ubuntu back into the new GRUB. And then I make yet another partition and try to add a frugal install of DSL. I figure that if I can do it WITHOUT a new GRUB, I can modify the Puppy Grub to account for DSL and have a quad-boot machine.

Long story short, DSL won't alllow an automated install without GRUIB, and pretty soon I can only boot DSL and Windows -- no Puppy, no Ubuntu.

I worked on if for a little while, but today I just decided to get rid of all the Linux partitions and start over.

For the first partition after Windows, I made a 512 MB Linux swap file. Then I made one big partition for Ubuntu and let the installer do its thing. The 140 updates I needed after the 6.06 install just finished.

I hadn't made that many mods to my old Ubuntu, so it won't take me too long to get this one where I want it. And I can start fresh with my Flash problem.

Bottom line: It'll take me awhile before I become a GRUB master.

What I took away: Puppy and DSL are fast, but they run even faster when installed to the hard drive. My previous installs of both have been "traditional," but the "frugal" install is better for both because it's simpler. You have maybe 3 or 4 large files on the partition, allowing for a very easy upgrade -- just drop in the new files to go to the next version.

You can even have a frugal install in a partition being used for something else, I think -- as long as you know how to boot it, it can coexist with another distro.

My triple boot did work -- Windows, Puppy and DSL. I should give up, but I probably won't. I think install order is important (in lieu of really mastering GRUB).

And I'm almost through with needing to put Windows on these boxes, so it'll be all Linux (and maybe some BSD) in the future. Next time I'll try DSL first, then Puppy, and then Ubuntu/Mepis/what have you. Or I could just try to really, really understand GRUB and all things about the master boot record.