: Hi...
: I presently have warp connect and use boot manager so I can have a dos/win
: and a linux partition. I am upgrading my machine to a P5 133 and will
: have 1 1.6 gig drive and one 540 meg drive and 32 megs of memory. I would
: like to have have 3 partitions, Warp, Linux and either win95 or nt. What
: I would like to know is this: is there a way to use Linux as a "boot
: manager" in the way that you can use OS/2? That is, boot Linux to a menu
: and choose which os to run.
You're speaking of partition selectors such as OS/2's "Boot Manager", which
are programs that get installed into the Master Boot Record, and sometimes
(as is the case with Boot Manager) spill over extra code onto elsewhere
on your hard drive (since the MBR is awfully small).
The easiest way to accomplish what you have in mind is to keep on using
Boot Manager. Have that, then a FAT (so-called "VFAT") -format partition
for Win95/NT, then an HPFS partition (preferably) for when you start OS/2,
then an ext2fs (native-Linux) partition for when you start Linux. Make the
FAT partition "primary", and the other two "logical". You can create
all these partitions inside OS/2's boot manager, then format them inside
their respective OSes. Don't forget a swap partition for Linux, too,
and make sure all startup partitions are within the first 1024
cylinders (the BIOS int13h limitation), unless you're using hardware-level
LBA translation.
Sometimes, the easiest way to meet the 1024-cylinder requirement is
to include partitions on a second hard drive. OS/2 and Linux don't
mind being booted from such partitions: DOS/Windows/Win95/NT don't
support it, and so need to be launched from the first partition on
the first hard drive, by contrast.
Another way to do this is with the nice, freeware partition selector
called lilo, which is included with all Linux distributions I'm aware
of, and also available separately. lilo, like Boot Manager, can be
installed to operate out of the MBR, and works almost identically
(but isn't as good looking).
People get confused about lilo because of its _other_ mode of operation:
In addition to being usable as a partition selector, operating out of
the MBR, it also can be installed as a boot loader for Linux (thus
its name, short for "Linux loader"), operating out of the boot record
of whatever startup volume is used for Linux's boot process.
If you stick with Boot Manager, you install lilo in its second role,
as the boot loader for Linux in Linux's boot record. Boot Manager
finds Linux's startup partition (in the partition table adjoining
the MBR) and loads the first sector of that partition into memory.
That's the boot record, so it loads lilo. lilo then grabs Linux's
kernel from the root directory (or wherever), loads it into memory,
and turns over control to it.
: Also, are there any gui web explorers that work with linux?
Of course. Netscape Navigator (which was up to 3.0 beta 5, when last I
looked), Mosaic, and Arena. You can get Netscape Navigator directly
from the Netscape Communications ftp servers and mirror sites.
Arena is shipped with some distributions, including Red Hat Linux
and Red Hat derivatives such as Caldera Network Desktop. You can
also find it in sundry ftp sites. XMosaic (NCSA Mosaic for the X Window
System) is available in ftp sites, as well.
: Given a choice, I would rather use a command line but I'd still like
: to know if gui is possible under linux.
You can do the former, too, if you get "lynx".
There, four browsers to choose from. Have fun!
--
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Rick Moen My admin will deny.
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