[devindotcom]

I really want to have a spare laptop on which I can install all kinds of weirdo OSes just to see what they're like, not for "real" use. I'm perfectly happy running Win7 and OSX but that's like being happy with vanilla and chocolate at Baskin Robbins! I need some kind of heavy-duty bootloader and partitioning agent, though. Any recommendations for a starting place?

[networked]

The obvious choice of boot manager would be GRUB 2 [1] but Plop Boot Manager [2] is entirely sufficient in many cases and easier to install and configure.

You can partition the hard drive, real or virtual, with Parted Magic [3].

If the reason you want to go with real hardware is that something like VirtualBox doesn't feel transparent enough to you (i.e., there's a lot of magic that happens in the background when you configure it through the GUI) I'd suggest trying out QEMU first. It requires more manual configuration (you'll have to read the man page and find the right set of command line options to make it do what you want) but the end result is that you have a better understanding of the virtual hardware your guest OS is running on. Plus, the Cirrus graphics card it emulates by default is well supported by old software.

[1] One good option is to use http://www.supergrubdisk.org/super-grub2-disk/.

[2] http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/

[3] http://partedmagic.com/doku.php

[S4M]

>> I really want to have a spare laptop on which I can install all kinds of weirdo OSes just to see what they're like

Actually, is there somewhere a list of all the weirdo OSes? I'd be interested to see that.

[sounds]

Here are some links for when you have a few minutes:

What does your OS look like? Screen shots http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12087

Wiki list of projects http://wiki.osdev.org/Projects

I don't meant to only report on the ones at osdev.org, but from the osdev.org wiki you can find the other main osdev sites and find their project lists. If you approach this with the attitude of open exploration, I think you'll enjoy it more.

[S4M]

thanks!

[justincormack]

Virtualisation is the best option rather than booting, for most operating systems. Xen is a good option, most OSs will run well under it (though probably not this one). You can boot other stuff from USB instead of bootloader.

[diek]

Why not use VirtualBox, VMWare Player, or qemu?

[oscilloscope]

That works, but I couldn't get audio to work. So no listening to Songs by God and Me or anything else in the OS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9CExVdxVwI

[diek]

It depends on what audio controllers he's written device drivers for. In most VMs you can specify which devices are present and visible to the OS. For example, VirtualBox has implementations of the Intel HD Audio, ICH AC97, and SoundBlaster16 controllers.

[tjaerv]

Why not simply use virtualization? Whether QEMU, Bochs, or VirtualBox?