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Home > Archive > General Discussion > November 2001 > Multiple operating systems
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Multiple operating systems
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| dmaftei 2001-10-31, 7:43 am |
| Hey,
Anybody knows if there's an upper limit on how many different operating systems can be installed on one machine?
TIA | |
| gammann 2001-10-31, 9:17 pm |
| I don't think so, as long as they can all use the same file system and play nicely together. | |
| dmaftei 2001-11-01, 6:49 am |
| I believe this is a "how many partitions on a hard drive" issue, not a file system system one.
Anybody else?! | |
| gammann 2001-11-01, 9:58 am |
| Why is that? Many OSes can use the same partition, you can install Win9x, NT, and Linux on the same FAT16 partition.
I believe the partition limit is fairly high, I don't think you could come up with enough different OSes to hit the partition limit, maybe if you used all the different variations of *nix. Actually I guess 26 is the maximum number of partitions you can have with FAT or NTFS. Since each partition gets assigned a drive letter. | |
| Nicole 2001-11-01, 9:59 am |
| Wouldn't they need to share the same file system in order for the partitions to recognize each other's existence? | |
| ccieToBe 2001-11-01, 10:58 am |
| I'm not sure what this number is, but this would be a limit on the harddrive, not the computer. Whatever the number is, I think it would be so high that you'd run into space issues before you max out.
Of course if you use something like VMWare it becomes soley a space issue.
What are you planning to load? | |
| Gundyman 2001-11-01, 11:24 am |
| I don't think so, too. But the most you have, the more crash and "weird" thing happen!!  | |
| depamo 2001-11-01, 11:56 am |
| There will be a limit on what you can install based on what you want. Depending on the OS and your approach, you can find yourself having issues. Solaris and Linux can only have 7 partations per physical disk. I tried to have 95/2K ADV Serv/Linux on one laptop. Got the 95 and 2K but Linux wouldn't let me install it since I fell one paration short. I tried to use System Commander but it failed to operate correctly. Also all the boot managers caused starting problems from hell and I eventually had to stop trying.
From that, if you are going to do 3 with a Unix type OS, you need to have 2 hard disks or limit your 2K and 95 OS's to one paratation, then leave the rest to Linux to suck up for SWAP, root, user mounts that you don't have a choice, required to make.
Probably the best, try it out and see where you get. System Commander is supossed to make them all play together correctly, but from this post you can see, it still has issues.
I have Linux 8.4 right now and herd that it had some good updates with installation. Haven't tried it yet but I am brave. |
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