# Triple boot with Linux OS



## pcolly (Apr 20, 2014)

Hi,
I'm planning for a tripe boot with FreeBSD, Mint and Mageia. I would like to get the experiences/ideas from FreeBSD members. 

Do I have to have FreeBSD in primary partition? Any suggestions how to format (Or which tool to use for format)? 

Thanks,


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## chrbr (Apr 21, 2014)

Dear @pcolly,

it should be no problem to do an installation according your requirements. Regarding the partitioning see http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall-pre.html. If I understand your question correct you might have an MBR setup. In this case FreeBSD must be in a primary partition. The "coarse" partitioning can be done with your favorite tool. During the installation the FreeBSD partition can be divided in more sections. It sounds a little bit unusual that the partitions are names slices which are divided in partitions. In think the handbook gives a very good introduction.

Regarding the boot process one idea is to use a boot manager like *G*rub2 and boot FreeBSD by chain loading. One issue of *G*rub2 is that it uses some code of the system where it has been installed from. If you use for example *M*int to install the boot manager it will not boot anymore once you delete the *M*int installation. It should be no show stopper but may be nice to know. On my system I use *G*rub2 to select between two FreeBSD installations or *D*ebian.


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