Is it possible to have three different operating system on one drive?

[Battousai1]

Hi, I am planning on putting up three operating system on one drive. WinXP, Win98 SE and Ubuntu, is it possible to have an operating system menu where you can choose what operating system to run on startup and how?

[Midknyte]

yes you can. i'd put them on separate partitions, of course. install win98, then xp, then ubuntu last.

https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/installation-guide/i386/non-debian-partitioning.html

http://lifehacker.com/software/ubuntu/hack-attack-how-to-tripleboot-windows-xp-vista-and-ubuntu-193474.php

[Lgbpop]

Heck yeah, I have four OSs on my 300GB drive and they play just fine together. Your biggest problem if any will be the vidcard - if it's a really recent one, like the nVidia 8000 series there won't be any drivers available for 98SE and you'll never get it to install properly. I found that out the hard way. If you have a newer card, install Microsoft Virtual Machine on XP and then install 98SE on it.

Otherwise, you can do it easily enough. Install in this order:
•98SE
•XP
•Ubuntu

Ubuntu should have the GRUB boot manager included that will allow you to boot into Linux or Windows; when you choose Windows, the XP install then gives you the choice of XP or 98SE.

[mobo57]

A problem can occur if you are using backup software. I had problems with True Image when I tried to do a full disk backup on a HD with XP and 64 on it. Related to the SATA and Mobo drivers for the different OS' and reading the disk. Caused my backups to be junk. At least I did not find out the hard way.

[Sterling_Aug]

I have seen systems with 7 OSs on it, and I have heard of systems with hundreds (yes hundreds) of OSs installed.

[Battousai1]

Thanks for all the reply! I have decided to install xp and ubuntu instead, the reason why i needed win98se is because of the two old games i have that i wanted to play but cant run on xp, i have decided to just use ubuntu and wine to run these old games. I just hope older games that are designed for win95 and win98 can run at its fullest on wine.

[Lgbpop]

You always have VM for that as well.