Dual Boot two OS's Linux and Windows

[abillybob]

Hey Guys

 

Does anyone know of a piece of software that will allow you to boot into at start up so you can choose what OS you'd like to select a bit like Boot Picker does with OSX. Basically I have made two partitions on one single hard drive installed Ubuntu on the 1 partition and Windows on the other. I want it so that when the kids turn on the computer it will ask which OS they would like to use so they can click on that OS and it will boot that partition. I have done a Google but couldn't find anything today that worked as well as I wanted it to!?

 

Any help would be most appreciated!

[smidsy]

Is this not something that the inbuilt GRUB bootloader in Ubuntu will do. I remember doing this a long time ago. You have to install Windows first as it prefers to be the first partition on the hard drive and then install Ubuntu on what is left. Once this is done configure GRUB in Ubuntu so that it contains both options. I know that we managed to get this automated for remote installations but I can't not remember the details of how this was done.

[abillybob]

Hmmm will look into it cheers Although we maybe adding other Linux OSes for a programming thing we are doing after September so it has to work with every OS Linux Mint.... etc not just Ubuntu!

[smidsy]

Shouldn't be an issue with different Linux OSes as many run using the GRUB bootloader. We had windows 7 and 2 different Fedora distributions (1 fully configured and 1 that the students had to configure as part of a exercise) installed on the same hard drive without any issues across a suite of 30 or so machines. The main problem we had is if you reinstall Windows you have to rebuild the bootloader as it gets overwritten.

[abillybob]

Ok sounds good to me cheers mate will look into it tomorrow as I leave in around half hour mwahaha to all you people still stuck at work But if anyone has any other suggestions I'd love to hear from um'!

[yugo]

Maybe something like this?

[abillybob]

Maybe something like this?

 

Looks good but only free for personal use :/

[LosOjos]

As @smidsy said, GRUB will do it. Most likely* no need to do any manual tinkering either, just install Windows first (remembering to leave space for other OS) then a Linux distro, vast majority of them (certainly Debian based i.e. Debian, Ubuntu, Mint) will detect Windows and offer automatically add a boot entry in to GRUB for you.

 

EDIT: just for clarity, GRUB is a boot loader similar to BCD (Windows' boot loader) but much more configurable. It's the default boot loader installed by many of the most popular Linux distros

 

* as with anything IT related and particularly *nix, be prepared to get your Google-fu going if something doesn't go exactly to plan!

Edited May 13, 2014 by LosOjos

[gavins38]

Just to note, if you do decide to add different Linux distros to the mix, you can run the GUI tool boot-repair to automatically detect all installed OSes and update GRUB accordingly.