gary’s web sofa

The secret is in where you put grub for each OS. Moblin, being cute ‘n friendly assumes that it’ll be the only OS on the disk so slaps it in /dev/sda (or whatever your hard disk is). Ubuntu Network Remix defaults to doing the same. What you need to do is install Moblin first but use a custom partitioning scheme (to leave room for Ubuntu). I created a 2GB /dev/sda1 root partition and a small swap partition. I then installed Ubuntu on /dev/sda3, again using a custom partition layout, but I clicked the “advanced” button to put grub on /dev/sda3 rather than on /dev/sda. You then reboot into Moblin (which is the only bootable OS at this stage) and edit your Moblin grub menu (/boot/grub/menu.lst) and tag the following at the end:

title Ubuntu
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader +1

This has the effect of kicking off the bootloader on /dev/sda3 (i.e. the Ubuntu one) when selected, booting Ubuntu!

The new Moblin 2 distro looks like a very strong contender for an OS for your netbook. Ubuntu Netbook Remix is great if you want to do heavy work (for a netbook anyway), but there are times when all you want to do is check something quickly on Wikipedia or watch a video. At those times the 60 second+ boot time of a netbook is a PITA and Moblin’s 10 second boot time is great. Now all I need to do is get dual-boot working…