boot disk vs. LILO

[phungilax]

if a create a boot disk can i eliminate using LILO. just pop in the boot disk whenever i want to use linux (mandrake 8.0) my parents some times use my computer and they're clueless, so would a boot disk be the best bet? is a boot disk like this even possible?

[ken257]

It is much nicer to use a boot manager rather then having to look for the floppy anytime you want to run linux.....and they do have a bad habbit of hiding on you.

Mandrake has been using Grub instead of LILO in their last couple of distro's. What you can do it set windows to be the default OS to boot and set a small timeout limit like 5 seconds this way they turn on comp on and windows will just boot right up with no interaction. When you want linux you just select it from Grubs menu before the 5 second timeout.

[David]

boot disks are also slower...a lot slower.

just tell your parents to get their own PC. If all they need to is surf the web or word processing then a K6-2 500 with 64Meg of RAM and a 4Gig hard drive should be quite cheap and OK for simple things. Me, I call myself a power user. Just got another 256Meg of PC133RAM. Another 256 meg stick and I'll be at 640MB...