Reply #43: Actually, a LONG time before that...

[Solon]

I remember using Lilo(Linux Loader) as my primary boot manager, dual booting DOS with Windows 3.1 and later Windows 95 with Linux, a menu came up when you turned on the computer, asking which OS to boot. All OSes have boot managers, otherwise they can't boot on their own, Microsoft's will only boot Microsoft operating systems. To make it really complicated, my computer is a triple boot system, Linux (Primary OS), Windows 98(some games that don't work under XP), and Windows XP. The Windows family is on a separate, slave, hard drive, and so, to simplify things a little bit, the first thing that comes up is the GRUB menu, its the current popular boot manager for Linux, and you can select between Linux and Windows, then, if you choose Windows, a menu comes up from Microsoft's boot loader, asking if you want to boot XP or 98. By the way, dual core computers are computers with SMP CPUs that are very complicated, totally different than Dual Booting a system. BTW, as an FYI, Linux scales on those CPUs MUCH better than Windows XP or Server can do.