On 03/03/11 4:10 AM, Phil Savoie wrote:
> When booting a system with multiple operating systems, it is true that
> only one operating system may be in use at one time, however, those
> other operating systems are installed on the disk in partitions. These
> partitions may be mounted like any other filesystem, hence the ability
> to use them while a single instance of an operating system is running.
> It's all done via the /etc/fstab and through mount options.
I am not a fan of multiple booting.
Multiple OS's can make a mess of file system permissions if you're not
careful. For instance, if you have multiple linux installs, you'll
need to go to some troubles to ensure their /etc/passwd stays in sync or
they'll make a mess of each others ownership.. and mapping linux user
numbers to Windows user ID's for NTFS is non-trivial.
Computer security overhead is multiplied times the number of OSs. If
you haven't booted that windows system for a few weeks, expect to spend
a good hour with Windows Update, Antivirus updates, web browser & plugin
updates, adobe, etc etc before using it next time. A network
configuration change would have to be made to all the different OS's.
etc etc.
and, when all is said and done, your system's bootstrap sequence becomes
a rather fragile house of cards.
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