Im using a 250GB Seagate IDE hard drive on a system running an AMD 64bit processor. (Setting up the bootloader correctly is my biggest worry.)

1. Yes you can Install Linux last and it will sort out the bootloader for you.
2. Try getting Acronis Disk Director Suite 10, you can manage partitions for all hard drives and it comes with an OS manager where you can dual or triple boot or however many OSs you can fit and you choose on startup which one to boot to, it is a very useful application–

   P.S. I can hook you up with it fo Fr33

3. Yup, you can! And to install Linux the last OS!
4. Why do you want to make this mixture?. To use more disk space for nothing?. Because Windows XP and Vista will not work in the same computer,because when this two system are together, will only work XP, . My advice is that you stick with one system only, and learn it well, and you will do anything that you want
5. Depending on what you're trying to do, instead of setting up a multi-boot with the multitude of problems (You'll probably end up with triple cascading bootloaders of Grub, Windows "Legacy" and Windows "Vista" each with their own way of defining paths to different partitions), I'd <highly> recommend you instead consider a virtualization solution.

   To do that, first select an operating system you're most familar with. That would be your "base" OS (HostOS) which will always run no matter what other OS might be running virtually.

   Then, select a virtualization product that runs on the HostOS. There are free products from Microsoft (Virtual Server which runs on Windows), VMware (Virtual Server which runs on both Linux and Windows) and Xen (XenExpress runs on Linux). Whichever of those three you choose, you can run any x86 OS virtually. If you want to run x64 in a GuestOS (virtually), the CPU must support either Intel's VT or AMD's Pacifica technologies and run on VMware (the others don't support x64 GuestOS yet).

   The advantages of virtualization over multi-boot
   - Simple, easy to setup (no boot manager issues)
   - Flexible to run or not run
   - Any or all can run <at the same time> on your machine simultaneously
   - You don't have to configure separate partitons for each OS, any or all can run on the same partition.

   I multi-boot when I have to, but I always prefer to run everything in virtual machines given a choice.

6. yep… xp.. vista.. linux in that order

   as for linux, the 64 bit version …

   as for xp.. get the amd optimiser

   http://www.amd.com/us-en/processors/tech…

Tags: linux laptop, linux software