Multiboot
You do also have the chance to test most distros without installing
with a LiveCD.
To install various distros it's really easy, just create new partitions
(you can use something like GParted, most liveCDs have GParted).
Resize your current partition, then just install the new distro on the
new partition and grub will auto setup to where you can go between the
OS's.
One note, you can only have 4 physical partitions, you can
create a
logical partition but that's just to keep in mind. Swap counts as one
of them. You don't have to create new SWAP for each distro, they can
share the same swap space.
So it would be step by step assuming you have already a
WindowsOS on
Partition C:/
1) Backup of most important data (everything should
go OK but
problems might ocure)
2) Defragmentate your Windows Partition
3) Start Gparted via LiveCD
4) Snip away from the unused space of the Window-Partition to create
others.
5) Create 2 physical partitions: One for virtual partitions (as
big as
possible) and one for Swap (2x RAM or 1GB)
6) Create your virtual partitions: One for Data (ntfs formated so every
OS will be able to read it)
At least one for each Linux-Distribution (5-10GB,ext3)
7) Start Linux installers and read carefully. So you install where you
want to install.
Grub will usually install automatically into MBR so there is no
difficulty in
booting.
But you can use also the more secure but a bit more difficult way:
a) Grubinstaller > into rootdirectory of linuxpartition
b) Console: dd if=/dev/hdaX of=/tmp/bootsecX.lin bs=512 count=1
c) copy bootsecX.lin from Temp-directory into C:/
d) change C:/boot.ini: c:\bootsecX.lin="Grub > Linux"
e) adapt menue.lst at linuxpartition in Boot/Grub/..
X.... number of partition
It might be hda or sda for harddisk
a is the first harddisk , b the second and so on
Grub and Linux not always see partitions the same way: instead of a and
b there might be a number (started from 0 and separated with a comma
from the number of the partition)