Dual-booting Mandrake 10.1 with Windows 2000

For many years I've been dual-booting my PC, using Windows most of the time, but sometimes switching to some flavour of Linux for development or experimentation. With each release of Mandrake (and presumably other distributions) it becomes easier, such that today I can set up quite a complicated arrangement in only a few minutes. Here's how to install Mandrake 10.1 and add it to your Windows boot menu.

1. When you initially set up your hard disk leave one or two small partitions free at the end of the disk for Linux


2. Install Windows


3. Burn CD 1 of Mandrake to a CD-RW (you won't need it after installation - just download packages from the internet)


4. Boot from Mandrake CD and install


5. Install the bootloader to your Linux partition (not your Windows partition) - it'll probably end in 5 or 6, eg /sda6


6. Boot with Mandrake CD in rescue mode


7. From rescue menu - mount disks


8. From rescue menu - go to console


9. Copy boot sector to from Linux partition to Windows partition, eg. dd if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/win_c/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1


10. Edit boot.ini in Windows partition to show Linux, eg. add
    c:\bootsect.lnx = "Linux (Mandrake)"

Obviously there's a lot more detail about these steps in the relevant Linux HOW-TOs, but I think it shows how straightforward things have become.