Q I'm guessing that a few readers have tried dual booting SUSE 9.2 and Windows XP. Given the problems with 9.1 (and several other distros, not just SUSE) a few months ago, my question is, does Grub get along with the XP boot loader straight out of the box now? I'm asking because my daughter's boyfriend is coming to stay with us, and he wants me to install SUSE on his laptop for him. The laptop is currently running WinXP, but he's seen my daughter's PC running Linux and wants to begin migrating. Naturally I'm delighted that he's decided to embrace the penguin, but I'd rather not (a) have problems during his stay trying to get a dodgy dual boot to work or (b) make his XP unbootable. (Actually, there might be some pleasure in that, but that's another story...!) If all is well, then SUSE 9.2 will go on. If there are still problems, I could always do a 9.0 install instead, but I'd really rather give him the benefit of the latest versions of everything.
A When you install SUSE, it will locate the Windows XP file system and automatically add an entry to the Grub configuration so that XP will continue to boot. For the most part, distributions are intelligent enough to spot what else is on the discs and will add the appropriate entries to the boot loader so that everything can keep on working.