On Wednesday 07 June 2006 03:45, Keske Saram stood up and spoke the
following words to the masses in /alt.os.linux.gentoo...:/

> I want to switch to Linux but I have to keep my Windows 2000 for some
> time too, for professional reasons. Therefore I need a dual boot that
> works safely.

< snip what I already know from a previous acquaintance in
/alt.os.linux.mandriva/ ;-) >

> How is the Gentoo installer? does it permit "hand-made" installations?

To my knowledge, the Gentoo installer is still experimental. It seems
to have some bugs and doesn't permit you to perform all iterations
offered by the typical "Gentoo-way", which is a commandline
installation.

To be quite honest, I don't think you'd want to tinker with Gentoo just
yet, not with your level of Windows-conditioning and paranoia towards
GNU/Linux - no offense! - until you have at least familiarized yourself
with the operating system enough to do away with some of the
misconceptions you have.

Your original idea - or at least, to my knowledge - was to use Mandriva.
My recommendation would be to stick to that one, while in the meantime
perhaps testdriving SuSE and/or Ubuntu/Kubuntu, possibly via a Live CD.
Then later on, you can decide to go for Gentoo.

The Gentoo installation manuals are *very* good - I've only seen manuals
with this level of handholding before with the Linux From Scratch
project, and Gentoo offers them in multiple languages - but a genuine
Gentoo installation requires pure commandline work.

You must also not be afraid of manually editing a few configuration
files, and you should be familiar with the concepts of a multi-user
operating system, preferably from the UNIX family.

Gentoo is a sources-based distribution. While it offers precompiled
binary packages, the general idea is that a typical install - and more
precisely, the process of updating packages - involves downloading the
sources and compiling them on your system. This is of course a greatly
automated procedure, thanks to Gentoo's /Portage/ system, which is
based upon the BSD Ports system.

I intend to make the transition to Gentoo myself pretty soon - I'm
actually bound to someone else's time schedule for a hardware update to
my system before I can make the transition - but I wouldn't recommend
Gentoo as a first distribution, especially not to you - again: no
offense, but most users on this newsgroup are unaware of the debate
that has been going on over at /alt.os.linux.mandriva/ and the Fear,
Uncertainty and Doubt you've been displaying over there regarding
GNU/Linux and how it would affect your existing Windows installations.
;-)

> I would like to start with a floppy as the boot disk, to get familiar
> with the Gentoo distribution, eventually, I would welcome a boot menu
> with Linux and Windows somewhere on a hard disk.
> Does Gentoo have any nice offering for that problem?

Gentoo recommends using GRUB as the default bootloader. GRUB works
similarly to LILO in that it's typically installed in the master boot
record of the first hard disk to be approached by the BIOS at boot
time.

The main difference however is that LILO is configured via
*/etc/lilo.conf* and that its configuration is then written to the
master boot record - or the bootsector of a floppy or a partition - and
to a file */boot/map* via the executable */sbin/lilo.*

This means that */sbin/lilo* will first validate the contents of
*/etc/lilo.conf* before compiling/computing the bootloader. The part
of LILO that will be written to the master boot record (or any other
bootsector) will then upon execution - i.e. at boot time - invoke the
binary code in */boot/map* to present you with your boot menu and to
execute the code required when you make your choice from that menu.

GRUB on the other hand is configured in realtime, because GRUB is a very
powerful bootloader, which some actually consider to be a miniature
operating system.

Like LILO, GRUB works in the CPU's real mode - i.e. the /i8086/
compatibility mode on all /IA32/ and /IA32-64/ CPU's - but it is
capable of directly reading a filesystem. LILO cannot; it reads the
kernel images via a direct cylinder/head/sector or logical block
address.

GRUB has a part that lives in the master boot record (or a floppy or
partition bootsector) and then invokes several more stages, which are
read off the GNU/Linux */boot* filesystem - whether that is on the root
filesystem or a separate partition - and will then read its menu
configuration from */boot/menu.lst,* which is sometimes symlinked to
*/etc/grub.conf* for FHS-logical reasons - the FHS (Filesystem
Hierarchy Standard) dictates that configuration files must be placed in
*/etc* but as GRUB is a bootloader and its configuration is needed at
boot time, its configuration file should reside in */boot,* so the
easiest way to deal with this duality is to use a symbolink link.

GRUB is far more powerful than LILO and has a number of extra commands -
for when you use it in commandline mode, rather than the menu mode -
but its configuration syntax is also quite different.

For instance, in LILO, you still refer to the first primary partition on
your primary IDE master as */dev/hda1,* while in GRUB this becomes
*(hd0,0).* GRUB also doesn't use a naming convention based upon the
type of connection like LILO does - i.e. primary IDE master, primary
IDE slave, SATA/SCSI/USB storage, etc. - but simply only counts the
hard disks.

So in other words, if you have an IDE hard disk connected to the primary
IDE master and one connected to the secondary IDE master while your
primary IDE slave is hooked up to a CD-R unit, then for LILO your hard
disks will be */dev/hda* and */dev/hdc*. In GRUB however, your hard
disks would be *(hd0)* and *(hd1).* The primary slave device - being a
CD writer and thus not a hard disk - would not be counted. The "hd"
characters also remain whether the disk is PATA/IDE or SATA/SCSI/USB.

As you can see from the explanation above, GRUB also starts counting at
"0", not at "1", so the first primary partition would bear number "0",
and the first logical partition in an extended partition container
would bear the number "4".

LILO ("LInux LOader")is the easiest bootloader to use and was
specifically designed for GNU/Linux, but GRUB ("GRand Unified
Bootloader") is the most powerful one and was designed with other UNIX
systems - like FreeBSD, for instance - in mind as well.

Both are very adequate at their jobs, but which one to choose again
depends on your level of expertise. GRUB is more powerful, but then
also requires that you know what you're doing. LILO is somewhat more
limited but is pretty straight-forward in set-up and use.

Free Software is all about having the freedom to choose... ;-)

--
With kind regards,

*Aragorn*
(Registered GNU/Linux user # 223157)