Dual booting Ubuntu and Slackware

[tonyW303]

I have Ubuntu 8.10 and only Ubuntu 8.10. No other OSes or partitions (except for SWAP). I would like to also put Slackware on my laptop. I do not have GRUB or anything like that... At least i dont think so... Anyway, what do I need to do to get Slackware and Ubuntu dual-booted?
Thanks in advance!

[andrew.46]

Hi tony,


I have Ubuntu 8.10 and only Ubuntu 8.10. No other OSes or partitions (except for SWAP). I would like to also put Slackware on my laptop. I do not have GRUB or anything like that... At least i dont think so... Anyway, what do I need to do to get Slackware and Ubuntu dual-booted?

Well I suspect that you actually do have grub (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_GRUB) installed as it is more than likely that it boots your existing system :-). There are many different ways to do this but I would personally suggest:


Use gparted to create a partition for slackware.
Install slackware to this partition and install lilo to the root of the partition not to the mbr
Chainload your slackware installation from grub on the mbr


This way you get to experience the simplicity and power of lilo as well as the power of slackware :-). Swap can be shared.

There are so many variations of this and no doubt others will suggest several more options. My own variation of this is to run slackware as a primary distro and run Hardy, Intrepid, Jaunty and Windows XP on Virtualbox and virtualisation is another thing to consider.

All the best with this,

Andrew