I have my sons old pc which has windows XP installed. I have been playing with Linux and installed Linux Mint which is the only OS that boots up. I also want to install Ubuntu and have a message on startup that lets me choose which OS to use. How do i do this?

Many thanks

Not sure if it copes with Linux etc, but the boot.ini file on the root directory directs initiation to whichever choice is selected. and you can have a default after a settable timeout. There are some good write ups on the internet about the parameters to use. I would strongly suggest backing up the old boot.ini, it is not for the nervous.
p.s. The boot.ini file is hidden and system, so if you screw up you won't see it if you try to copy back under DOS (if you are FAT32) so suggest resetting those from Windows before you start.
good luck

Windows has its own boot program as does Linux. Linux would normally incude grub which is a boot loader. You can install it after if you chose not to initally.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/

hth.

Grub is on the ubuntu CD and will look for other os's when your go through the guided install.

You need to run the Mint install program again and install Grub on the MBR of the first hard disc (ie first physical hard disc).

Ubuntu and Mint are really the same Mint comes from the Ubuntu repositories with a couple of extra repositories added for the extra Mint software.

The essential difference apart from the eye candy is that Mint has the windows multimedia codecs & accelerated graphics drivers as part of the distro, and all the other installed software is tailored for a desk top pc.

Any software that you want from
Ubuntu can be added from vast array of software in the Ubuntu and Mint repositories. In addition Mint has it's own software portal website http://linuxmint.com/software/?sec=categories&release=2 that installs files directly from the Mint website.

Any cutting edge Debian stuff can also be used if you add extra repositories or you can use sites such as http://dir.filewatcher.com/d/Debian/i386.0.0.htm to down load the .deb package and just click on the downloaded package to install.

But be aware going outside the official repositories for your distro can cause unforseen problems.







[Edited on 12/2/08 by britishtrident]

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You need to run the Mint install program again and install Grub on the MBR of the first hard disc

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MBR is the Master Boot Record. Mint/linux can anywhere there is room

I had Windoze and Ubuntu loaded on 2 different drives - GRUB (when installed) comes up with a menu at startup, allowing you to pick the OS you want to run.

If you've already installed Ubuntu and it boots into it on start-up then you've already got GRUB installed - there's an option in the Admin menu that allows you to edit the GRUB setup, pick dual-boot, and so on. For example, I had mine set up to show the GRUB menu and if I didn't pick anything within 5 seconds it would start Ubuntu.

Unless the bios is setup to do differently a PC will always first try boot from the master disc on the first hard disk controller -- many modern pc motherboards s also have a boot disk select option at boot up (usually press F8 key).

Might be an idea to check the jumper settings on both the drives --- sometimes when combinations of drives from different manufacturers extra care has to be taken with jumper settings.