dual booting XP and Linux

[Dan]

Mike McCarty wrote:
> Timothy Murphy wrote:
>> In my opinion your advice is completely misconceived.
>>
>> Firstly, I imagine 95% of people already have Windows on their machines,
>> and are now installing Linux.
>>
>> Assuming they are installing Fedora,
>> I would say that if they simply follow the instructions on the disk,
>> and install the boot-loader as recommended,
>> that will work 95% of the time.
>
> I'm tryng hard not to be the guy who gives bad advice 5% of the time.
>
>> You are inventing difficulties which simply do not arise
>> in the vast majority of cases.
>
> I find that taking a little precaution at the beginning can
> avoid the difficulties that may arise. I also find that
> preventing problems is easier, simpler, and less work in
> the long run than trying to disentangle the mess which
> results when once in 20 bad things happen.
>
>> It's actually quite a bad idea to change disks around during 
>> installation,
>> as grub has a fixed idea of which disk is which
>> (as described in /boot/grub/device.map).
>
> I suggested not installing GRUB on the hard drive until after
> getting boot to run on a floppy if possible. I believe in
> "disentanglement" as much as possible. I like to have things
> work separately before trying to make them work together.
>
> I'm not going to try to respond to you any further.
>
> Mike
I think he's just trying to get at that the majority of people should 
just let anaconda handle installing GRUB, and for 90% or so of those 
people, it will just work. If it doesn't, you have quality advice for 
them to follow, otherwise, it is unnecessary work for some who are just 
getting started with linux and don't know anything about grub or perhaps 
even the windows bootloader.
-Dan