On Wednesday 18 July 2007 01:02, Iain Buchanan wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-07-17 at 18:12 -0500, »Q« wrote:
> > In <news:bf6b6d5c0707171550sa74b587v3652ac2f00d3be8e@mail.gmail.com>,
> >
> > Thufir <hawat.thufir@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >I've read the GRUB documentation, but still don't understand why the
> > >following worked:
> >
> > [snip grub.conf]
> >
> > >I would've thought that the chainloader +1 statement would be required
> > >-- that's my experience at least.
> >
> > It's only needed if you're booting an unsupported (by grub) OS;
>
> no only unsupported OSs, you can chainload anything (bootable) such as
> another linux distro, which has installed a bootloader into the
> partition.  See how this guy booted 30+ OS's from grub:
> http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=134856
>
> >   it
> > tells grub to just hand off to another bootloader.  The +1 tells grub
> > to load the first sector of the OS's partition, which is where the
> > other bootloader should be embedded.
> >
> > As long as you're booting Linux kernels, you can just point grub at
> > them without using another bootloader.
>
> you mean as long as grub understands the kernel and filesystem, you can
> tell grub to load the kernel directly, with provided arguments.
>
> I think :)

If you have some reason not to mix one OS', or distro's boot files, kernels, 
etc with another, plus if you want to try a different version of grub then 
you can install grub separately in the new OS partition (instead of the MBR) 
and chainload this from your primary grub installation.  Should you wish to 
remove the new OS at a later date, you will not need to rummage through the 
primary OS' /boot to clean out redundant kernel images and what not.

Otherwise, as already mentioned, Grub will boot natively all Linux distros.
-- 
Regards,
Mick