DavidMD,

The irony of Linux boot loaders (Grub and Lilo) is they were designed from day one to boot any operating systems you care to install in a PC. Any Linux, Dos, Windows, BSD, Solaris and Darwin makes no difference. The number of OS isn't an issue either.

Every Linux installer, say 99% of them, is designed to check every partition of every hard disk for a resident boot loader and include it if one is found. The majority of them will alert the user if a MS system is detected but both Grub and Lilo cannot tell if it is a Dos, Win9x, win2k or XP and need the user to define the name of the system.

Therefore if a Linux user replicates the boot loader of every Linux inside its root partition then every newer Linux will be able to find it and try to include it in the boot menu. In Linux a user can ask the boot loader of an installed Linux to be replicated in a floppy, inside any partition or in the MBR. This operation can be achieved without booting up the installed Linux but by just any Linux Live CD.

Every partition has the sector reserved as the boot sector and that is the rightful home to place the system's boot loader there to be readily booted by the system controlling the MBR.

If a user installs the first Linux and places its boot loader in the MBR. He can installs say another 99 distros but keeps everyone in its root partition. Then the rest of the 99 distros can be booted exactly like a Window, using the same commands as described in above post #29, changing only the partition reference for each distro. It is jnothing other than just editing the Grub's configuration file /boot/grub/menu.lst (or /etc/lilo.conf if Lilo is used) for the distro controlling the MBR.

Grub can boot more than 100 systems in one menu but Lilo's menu is restricted to 27 entries. A relay system is needed for Lilo if you have more than 27 systems to boot to.

Multi booting in Linux has to be the easiest. If the user knows just 5% of what Grub or Lilo can do he/she can actually let the installers to arrange everything without lifting a finger.

From my limited experience with Linux if a user can install an operating system in the PC then Grub (or Lilo) can boot it.

Both Grub and Lilo were written to conform to the PC standard of accessing the hard disk. In that respect these boot loaders can boot systems before Grub or Lilo was invented and any future system that has not yet been invented yet, as long as it does not deviate from the PC hard disk access convention.