Appendix 4: Multiple OS Installation

There are different ways that more than one Operating System can reside on

the same machine. DOS and Windows can easily reside on the same machine

with Linux, and each can be booted at the choice of the operator. Win 

dows 95/98 is a little bit trickier since it demands its own boot manager.

Installing Windows 95/98 after installing Linux will result in LILO getting

 bumped off  the system. Installing Linux AFTER Windows 95/98 will work.

You will need to configure your Linux system to be able to boot Windows 95/98

with LILO however.

LILO can be used as long as there is a Linux partition on the first physical

drive. With a modified boot record and LILO, the system can be made to boot

either Linux or DOS/Windows 95/98. There are other boot loaders available

for Intel machines. Most of these can be used to boot a variety of operating

systems.

The more versatile method of installation uses the DOS program loadlin.exe.

This software can boot a kernel image from a DOS partition and mount any

partition on the system as the root partition for that kernel. For automatic

operation, the best method is to use the config.sys menu system in DOS to offer

the choices of the different OS available on the machine. Then autoexec.bat

can determine whether to go ahead and boot DOS or run loadlin and boot

Linux. The following example should clarify this process:

config.sys:

[Menu]

menuitem=NewLinux, Linux 2.0.30

menuitem=OldLinux, Linux 2.0.27

menuitem=DOS

[DOS]

DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE

DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS

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