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OS's

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nitram:

--- Quote from: cast-fish on November 22, 2015, 10:40:59 AM ---Question:
Once my machine  has an empty primary partition
and i install win32 into that partition, i expect that win32's bootloader will then obscure the
existing boot manager that was acting in my second Linux partition
 (partition 2 "tinyCORE" Linux--)(logical partition)-- syslinux boot manager.

--- End quote ---
My experience is the same, best to install a Microsoft OS first. However, if your system has the luxury of a second physical drive, uses a good old fashioned BIOS and you have access to the hardware then the solution is simple and it does not matter which OS gets installed first/last/re-installed.

For example, install Linux distros onto SDA, temporarily disconnect drive and install Windows OS onto 'SDB'. Reconnect both drives and set the BIOS to boot from SDA, where the Linux bootloader resides. With a bootloader like Grub2, running an update-grub will then auto find the Windows OS and add it to the boot list.

With this technique subsequent Microsoft re-installs won't wipe out bootloader. Probably other methods, although this one is bullet proof and doesn't require re-installing Linux distributions and bootloaders just because of a Microsoft issue.

cast-fish:
yes

that is a good idea.....since the optical BAY here is empty after unhooking the CD drive
and a small optical Cady to house a hard drive is like 3 bucks new online....the cady slots into the optical laptop slot and the HDD slots into the cady. The HDD Appears as a second drive in your laptop (laptop sized HDD which i have spare ones of here)

Misalf:
I don't know the reason for the affinity of primary partitions of MS OSes.

DOS even needs to be booted from the first primary partition. However, you can set the "hidden" flag via most boot loaders and the OS works fine again. This is also needed if multi-booting different versions of Windows, say XP + 7.

I would even go that far to suspect that Microsoft doesn't care about the possibility of alternate OSes to be installed on one system and thereby even ignores it's own products. Maybe to simplify code - Maybe to push sellings.

Also, at least grub4dos can be loaded via the Windows boot loaders (only tested up to Win7).
Either go with it or don't use it I'd say. I'm going with it unfortunately.

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