How many OSes on one physical disk?

[Eric "Shubes"]

vodhner at cox.net wrote:
> (Was:  How to safely update open office to 2.0+?)
> 
> OK, I didn't pick up the point about an old version of Mandrake.
> Now I understand the "safely" part.  That does lead to a need
> for some hacking.
> 
> If you want the latest apps, and don't want a major hacking
> challenge each time you want to update, then it's best to have
> a fairly fresh OS and application environment.
> 
> I've learned to move on to new distros every year or two, and
> keep a few on the back burner so I know what's out there.
> Otherwise, Linux definitely has forced-obsolescence problems
> like any other environment, because the software and
> hardware continue to develop.
> 
> Since I also do some work in Windows, and share files
> between Windows and Linux, I have my data neatly tucked
> into separate partitions, mostly FAT32, and this means I can
> replace an operating system easily without having to rebuild
> my whole life.
> 
> AS A RESULT, I'd like to have lots of Linux versions in place
> at the same time, for multi-booting.  This leads to a partitioning
> question.
> 
> I have this nice 130-GB disk.  I would like to break it up into a
> whole slew of partitions, but I gather there are definite limits.
> Thus I can't have, for example, 99 different OSes on this drive
> each with its own boot partition.  Right?
> 
> How far can I go in this direction?  Is there a practical way to
> have partitions within partitions or something?  Something like
> an ISO filesystem housed in an ordinary file?  If so can it
> update its data while running?  Etc.  .  .  .  
> 
> I'm thinking that VMWare and lots of virtual profiles could be
> one way to go, and that way I could keep one basic system
> running all the time while I'm tinkering with the others.  But I'd
> like to look into the multi-multi-boot approach too, if I could put
> lots of boot partitions on one disk.
> 
> Ideas?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Vic
> 

You can normally have up to 16 partitions (15 usable) on an IDE drive, 4
primary and 12 in an extended partition. If you create a primary boot
partition near the front of the drive you should have no problem with
multiple OSes.

That being said, I think you'd be much more productive (and happier!) with
VMware.

-- 
-Eric 'shubes'