How I fixed my Haiku A3 boot problem [with help from Linux Mint]

Just thought I’d share how I solved my problems getting Haiku Alpha 3 to boot. You may find the ultimate solution amusing; hopefully some may find it helpful.

I started off with a CD of Haiku that I had burned, made a partition, then installed it. However, because I had installed Windows first on my boot HDD, my bootloader was Windows Boot Loader, not GRUB, and the Haiku partition did not show up. Further, when I tried to use the CD to start the install I had on the HDD partition, it kept on acting as a Live CD. Problem.

“Fine”, I thought, I’ll go into my Ubuntu partition and make GRUB the bootloader, then edit the scripts per the instructions at Haiku-os.org. “How hard can it be?”, I thought to myself, naively. Well, I found the Ubuntu HUD (Head Up Display) more or less impossible to use, and working out how to launch GRUB was not exactly easy.

I had been thinking about trying out Linux Mint, and it seemed like a good time … so I downloaded the ISO, burned, and installed … and presto, Linux Mint installed GRUB 1.99 for me and helpfully compiled a list of all the OSes I had installed. So: I have a nice list presented to me at boot time, I scroll down to Haiku, select, and boot. Problem solved.

[Did I say that I solved my problem? No, I should give all credit to those user-friendly guys at Mint. Hooray for Mint!]

beniflex said

> Hooray for Mint!
No : Hooray Gnu ! It's a Grub2 feature and it's available in many recent Linux distributions (Ubuntu for instance)

FWIW: Ubuntu has GRUB, but it didn’t install it as the bootloader when I put in the Ubuntu partition. The bootloader remained as Windows Boot Loader. It was only when I installed Mint that GRUB was installed as the primary bootloader and Windows Boot Loader was demoted to a secondary (chain-loading) status.

I’d imagine this could vary a lot with individual setups, though.

(And yes, you are right–big thanks to the GNU guys who wrote GRUB in the first place.)

Mint is the best linux distro out there at the moment, everything is tweaked and works out of the box.