[Leaplist] Distro and LAN choices, this works for me!

[Richard F. Ostrow Jr.]

That's a GNU / MS limitation. Proper operating systems have a single
partition, then "slice" that partition into a nearly infinite number of
"labels". It would be nice if GNU would pick up on this, but I'll admit
that it shouldn't be high on the priority list, either.

Primary partitions are not OS-dependant - This is a BIOS-level limitation.
At some point, x86 hardware designers said "nobody will need more than 4
partitions", and limited it to 4. Eventually, someone had the bright idea
of putting a small table at the start of a primary partition which defined
sub-partitions on that partition (logical/extended partition), which
alleviated much of the pain that inevitably followed the 4 partition
limit.

Basically, if you want to deviate from the x86 standard of 4 partitions to
a disk, you will become incompatible with drives that *do* use the 4
partition standard.

Here's how it works. In order to boot, the system BIOS looks at the first
few bytes of a drive for a partition table. This table *must* follow a
standard format, which only allows for 4 partitions. Once this table is
read, the BIOS attempts to execute the MBR section of this disk (also at
the beginning), at which point the OS can get its fingers dirty and do
whatever it wants.
-- 
Life without passion is death in disguise

On Mon, June 4, 2007 7:45 am, Robin \(Bartow FL\) wrote:
> I have learned that when resources are shared, conflicts come up. It
> applies to public highways, company tools, computer software and hardware.
> A list could go on and on.
>
> Since four partitions are possible, I use the first three for operating
> systems and the last extended partition for storage and linux swap space.
>
> I use the MBR to identify an active partition. A bootloader (as needed)
> resides with partition and OS.
>
> My partition numbers (and share names/locations) are standardized. I can
> install or un-install any choice of distro with a likewise or otherwise
> distro within a LAN with minimal configuration issues.
>
> /robin
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