Questions tagged [dual-boot]

What Questions Should Have This Tag?

• Troubleshooting issues with dual booting
• Troubleshooting issues with multi Booting

Some Basic Definitions:

Dual boot means having two installed operating systems, and can 'boot' into both, usually with one bootloader (GRUB is most commonly used for Ubuntu)

Multi boot means having more than two installed operating systems.

A partition (also sometimes known as a volume) is an area of space on a disk. Partitions are formatted with a filesystem (ext2, ext3, ext4, NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, Btrfs, etc)

Brief Introduction to the Subject:

Dual booting or multi booting a system is useful because one can have different operating systems for specific tasks, or for compatibility. A bootloader, such as GRUB, LILO, or Windows Boot Manager, will give access to every installed OS. Once booted, the selected system will have control of the system and full use of memory and CPU resources. Separate OSs are installed on separate partitions of the same disk, or on separate disks, and the boot records (which control how the bootloader knows what OSs are available, among other things) can be on a single partition, or multiple partitions.

Important Links for Learning More:

Consider using the boot info script when asking your question:

• http://askubuntu.com/questions/90045/how-do-i-investigate-boot-and-partition-issues
• http://askubuntu.com/questions/6328/how-do-i-install-ubuntu
• http://askubuntu.com/questions/221835/installing-ubuntu-on-a-pre-installed-windows-8-64-bit-system-uefi-supported
• http://askubuntu.com/questions/88384/how-can-i-repair-grub-how-to-get-ubuntu-back-after-installing-windows
• How to Rescue a Non-booting GRUB 2 on Linux