Multiple-boot — General information

Many people all over the world are using live operating systems that are directly bootable from one media (CD/DVD/Flash/HDD). In the foretime those live operating systems were usually used by advanced system administrators, who use them for various purposes. In most cases the base for those live operating systems is Linux or other free operating system. Nowadays the number of people interested in live operating systems considerably grows. The majority wish to start high-grade operating system on any computer simply by inserting a CD/DVD or plugging in an USB-Stick/USB-HDD. The following sections will describe the basics of preparing one or several operating systems on one media and how to make them bootable. Details about how to build a specific live operating system can be found on the correspondent sections of this site.

There are a lot of programs that offer the functionality of packing multiple operating systems on one media, allowing selecting one on start-up. The most interesting programs that cover this functionality are: Grub4Dos, CDShell, Syslinux and BCDW (Bootable CD Wizard). CDShell possesses the greatest quantity of possibilities for creating beautiful, unique menus with a large set of available functionality - at the expense of high complexity, compared to other loaders like BCDW, Syslinux or Memdisk. Unfortunately the most recent version came out in 2005; currently the project is most likely stopped.

Recently the boot loader Grub and its variant Grub4Dos is attracting an increasing popularity. Grub4Dos it is a modern loader, offering an extensive set of functionality. It allows loading of every current operating system type and besides that it can - when necessary - automatically find common operating systems. Additionally it supports booting via network and includes a sophisticated configuration system. Grub4Dos is used as the common loader for a majority of projects presented on this site. Syslinux was initially developed for loading Linux, but now it allows loading almost every operation system from any data source even over network. It can be adapted to different conditions easily and contains a number of unique functions for loading floppy- and Linux-images. BCDW allows making a standard loading menu in a very short time, concurrently it possesses extensive possibilities. Unfortunately the project had stopped in 2004.

CDShell and BCDW (CDs/DVD) are limited to load operating systems located on a disk. Grub4Dos and Syslinux are much more universal and allow loading operating systems practically by local or remote media. Both programs are actively developed and also the majority of projects on this site are adapted for being loaded by on of them.

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