duo boot systems...revisited, i think?

[Kerry Hoath]

Personally I don't care how badly you spell your messages, however there 
seems to be some confusion on the list exactly what you want and what you 
mean. I'll try summarize your options, and see if that makes anything 
clearer to you.

Feel free to write to me off list if it would help.

A dual core processor or core duo or core 2 duo (depending on how new it is) 
is a processer that has 2 cores in it. It is capable of executing 2 tasks at 
once (in theory) and is a handy thing to have when you have a high workload 
on your computer or you are virtualizing see below.

Obviously a dual boot system is a system that can boot into Linux or Dos.
Usually the decision is made at boot time as to which operating system to 
boot; usually with a boot loder of some kind.

Linux boot loaders include grub, lilo and others. You can also put a loader 
in the master boot record which will allow you to hold the alt or shift key 
at boot and pick which partition to boot.

There are also loaders that you can load from dos that can start linux, 
however I am not sure how they handle modern kernels and initial ramdisks.
syslinux and loadlin are two that spring to mind.
An initial ramdisk is a set of files and scripts that are loaded into 
extended memory and control is passed to them by the kernel.
This initial ramdisk is responsible for loading drivers for the root file 
system, key hardware drivers and starting up raid or volume management 
systems.
The boot loader needs to load this file (usually 4-12 megabytes large) into 
extended memory above the kernel and pass control to the Linux kernel.
This blows dos away and gets you running Linux.

Most people use a Linux boot loader to load this up as they tend to work 
better at doing this. These loaders can also boot dos; however it is best to 
keep dos on the first drive, (bios drive 0x80) and Linux either on a 
partition of that drive or on the second disk.

If running 2 operating systems on the one box you have a couple of options 
as you have surmized.
2 disks with an operating system per disk, or 1 disk with multiple 
partitions.

I am over-simplifying here in order to make this understandable however when 
you partition a disk a table in the first sector of the disk tells you how 
much disk is allocated to each operating system.

Think of it as slicing up a cake into different sized pieces, you allocate 
diferent sized pieces depending on how hungry people are.

You put dos on the first partition of a disk (usually) and Linux on one or 
more partitions after this.

Install dos (or Windows 95 dos not sure which one you mean) first,
on a partition that does not take up all the disk, then put Linux on another 
partition or two.

I usually have /boot on a primary partition which contains the boot loader, 
and the rest of Linux in an extended partition, (or in dos terms a set of 
logical drives in the extended partition)

It's up to you how to do things; however this might help clarify or confuse 
things a bit more.

virtualization is a method of running one operating system inside another on 
a computer.
You can run Linux inside a virtual machine inside Linux, or Windows or other 
operating systems.
You can't run anything virtually inside dos because dos does not run in 
protected mode and virtualization is not possible in this environment.

You can run virtual Linux in windows, or virtual windows in Linux.
This allows you to run both operating systems at once; saving you a reboot 
to switch between them.
Linux has a program called dosemu, which when correctly configured allows 
dos to run inside Linux. Quite a lot of stuf runs under it including some 
games and certain screen readers so it is worth a look.

There's nothing I can do under dos that I can't do under Linux, and unless 
you have certain applications like word perfect or similar you might find 
yourself using Linux more than you use dos.
I ended up deleting my install of dos about 6 months after installing Linux 
in 1993.

Regards, Kerry.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karen Lewellen" <klewellen at shellworld.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 7:41 AM
Subject: Re: duo boot systems...revisited, i think?


I am sorry that my spelling is such an issue for you.
As expressed I wrote that post in the middle of the night.
Not shared however is that I learned that my 20 year old nephew died of a
heart attack in America, and i was more than  a bit  distracted.
Others seemed to understand my meaning,
Indeed my goal is to run DOS and Linux on different hard drives, and boot
into Linux as needed.
Is that clear enough for you?


On Sat, 19 Jul 2008, luke wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, Karen Lewellen wrote:
>
>> Not running windows, but will hunt virtual options for DOs.
>
> There are no virtual options for DOS, at least not for running virtuals
> under DOS.  A virtual machine is one operating system which runs in an
> emulated hardware environment under another operating system.  Linux and
> Windows can run virtual  DOS machines, but DOS can not run virtual
> anythings.
>
> Now, for DOS under Linux, DOSEmu is probably a better solution than
> virtualization.
>
>> now that I think of it though, a reboot is no major factor, any way to 
>> create
>> a . bat file run in dos that will reboot the system into Linux as needed 
>> into
>> Linux without requiring the duo processor?
>
> What do you mean by "duo processor"?  If you are talking about multiple
> core processors, those have nothing to do with duel boot (duel not duo).
>
> Duel boot, is when you can boot into one of many operating systems which
> are installed on your machine, usually in separate hard drive partitions,
> or on separate hard drives.  That has no connection what ever, either to
> multiple processors, multiple cored processors, or duo anythings.
>
>> I have been dragging out this business long enough, but hardware and 
>> talent
>> has been the issue.  I do not want yet another hardware factor because I 
>> have
>> to find a duo processor.
>
> Again, what is this "duo" processor, and why do you need it?
>
> Luke
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> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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>
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