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

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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!]

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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)
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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.)

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