[CentOS] dual-booting <- Re: installing Cents os server 7.0

Thu Jul 2 16:42:04 UTC 2015
ken <gebser at mousecar.com>


On 07/02/2015 11:51 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 2:43 AM, ken <gebser at mousecar.com> wrote:
>> On 07/01/2015 05:10 PM, Jonathan Billings wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Jul 1, 2015, at 12:20, Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> My understanding is CentOS doesn't really support dual-boot anyway,
>>>> whereas Fedora does.
>>>
>>>
>>> Nope. CentOS 5, 6 and 7 all support dual-boot.
>
> Considering CentOS 7, at least, doesn't include ntfsprogs, the
> installation of CentOS can't support shrink or discovery of Windows in
> order to create a GRUB menu entry for it. That tools exist the user
> can make this work after installation is not at all what I'd consider
> "supported".
>
>
>> Since Linux first came out in '92, every distro I've used-- SLS, Slackware,
>> Redhat, Suse, CentOS, and probably one or two others-- *all* have allowed
>> dual-boot.  The feature is built into grub, and lilo before that.  Anyone
>> who put together a distro which didn't support dual-boot would have to take
>> the feature out-- rewrite the code (and why do that just to take out a
>> perfectly functioning feature?)--, else use some other boot loader... e.g.,
>> the Raspberry Pi distros don't support dual-boot AFAIK.
>
> Dual boot support has a large number of dependencies, it's not just
> dependent on GRUB doing the right thing. When ntfsprogs isn't included
> on installation media, for example, Windows dual boot isn't going to
> happen at install time, you have to do it manually after installing
> ntfsprogs.
>
> ....  <snip>

I guess it depends on one's definition of "support".  Your definition 
seems to be more demanding... which often is a good thing, urging Linux 
on to be better.

Me, I didn't use the word "support" at all.  I only said that I've done 
it on every one of my Linux systems since 1992 (except Raspberry Pi's). 
  Yes, a little manual work was needed on the Windows side, but this was 
well documented and frankly not that hard.  Since I've done it-- 
numerous times-- I'm not readily persuaded that it's impossible to do.

Sure, it would be nice during the install process to simply click a 
button for "Yes, I want to dual-boot with Windows (or whatever)" and it 
would just happen.  Yeah, I'd like that.  On the other hand, what other 
(i.e., commercial) OSs support/allow/permit dual-booting?  Given all the 
code for Linux is readily available to Apple and MS, it's much, much 
simper for them.  The exact opposite is true for Linux developers.

With VMs solid and much more useful and with deep market penetration, 
the need for dual-booting seems to be fading anyway.