are there any distros which are safe to install dual-boot?

[redcape]

I haven't dual booted for many years, but I have a user who wishes to install Linux onto a machine and dual boot with Windows XP. According to what I have read, all major distros suffer from a bug which messes up the partition table in dual boot configurations. It appeared in Fedora Core 2 and Mandrake 10, and it has so far not been fixed in FC 3 or Mandrake 10.1.

Here is a link showing it has not been fixed: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=115980

So, do I recommend an old distro like Fedora Core 1, or are there any modern distros that are safe to dual boot?

[Calipso]

From what I have heard, this bug only existed in Fedora Core 2.....I never tried Fedora so I dont know much about it and whether or not it has been fixed.
What I can tell you from my personal experience is that you can dual boot with Mandrake 10 without a problem.
This is currently what I am doing. I was also able to dual boot using Mandrake 9.1.

Im sure that many other distros can be dualbooted safely, but since I only have experience using Mandrake, I will not recommend or comment on the others. However, Mandrake 10 dual boots with winXP without a problem.
I do suggest reading documentation about dual-booting and reading posts on this forum about dual-booting before actually trying it.

Oh and of course back up, back up, back up:)

[janet loves bill]

Originally posted by redcape
According to what I have read, all major distros suffer from a bug which messes up the partition table in dual boot configurations.


Uh, Slackware does not suffer from this.............

I have dual/triple booted LFS, Slackware and Win98se for 3 years now.........
and no problem like this has ever came up!!

[redcape]

Originally posted by Calipso
From what I have heard, this bug only existed in Fedora Core 2.....I never tried Fedora so I dont know much about it and whether or not it has been fixed.
What I can tell you from my personal experience is that you can dual boot with Mandrake 10 without a problem.
This is currently what I am doing. I was also able to dual boot using Mandrake 9.1.


It definately does affect Mandrake 10:
https://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7959

However it doesn't affect everyone, so the fact that it works for you does not mean it will work for my user. Sure I can tell him to backup, but if his first experience with Linux destroys his Windows system I doubt he will ever touch Linux again.

[Calipso]

hmm....strange that I never heard about this on this forum. Maybe I missed it.

I didnt read through the whole discussion in the link, but it seems like the person had this problem with RC1 which is a pre-release vers.....but maybe it affects the official version as well and i just got lucky.

[Calipso]

Sure I can tell him to backup, but if his first experience with Linux destroys his Windows system I doubt he will ever touch Linux again.

Youre absolutely right about this. Hopefully someone can guide you in the right direction and help you choose the right distro.

[fatTrav]

I've only had it happen on one of my two machines which (briefly) ran FC2. And the solution is well documented and simple enough. Well, maybe not simple enough for a total n00b, but you could certainly fix it.

Same systems run or have ran in a dual boot with win2k Gentoo, Mandy10, FC2, Slack10 and Debian sarge (new installer). Only FC2 had the issue.