Re: Guidance on conflicts between GNU GRUB and proprietary software

[Bogdan]

>  * The BIOS can often only read from relatively near the start of the

>    disk, and core.img must be readable by the BIOS.  If some other
>    operating system is already installed - the common dual-boot case,
>    and the case where this problem is overwhelmingly most likely to
>    matter - it's likely to occupy a large stretch of partitioned space
>    right after the boot track.

Are you talking about the conventional INT 13h interface?

>  * The MBR format has so many irritating restrictions on primary
>    partitions that the more partitions an operating system needs to
>    create by default, the more stress we put on partitioning
>    algorithms.  (Most people don't notice any of this until they try to
>    install on a machine whose OEM helpfully created three or four
>    primary partitions already.)

Only one of the 4 primary partitions can be active. So, turn whatever is not 
needed into an extended partition. What tools with this screw over? Or, are we 
talking about OSes that don't support extended partitions here?

Cheers,
Bogdan