Taral wrote:
Why wait for general acceptance? An extension of this sort can be implemented OS-by-OS, with non-compatible OS's using the old extended partition system. Just put some kind of checksum and magic number in the extended MBR area :)
A main point to this is better multiple OS interoperabilty. This is not specifically about better use by Linux.
Example, and what finally got me to post this request:
sda1 BOOT partition. After having had it wiped out so much and dealing with 'too far down the disk' bios retardation, I finally put boot managers, kernels, etc in a small partition at the beginning of the disk.
sda2 DOS partition. For some reason I seem to need this time to time.
sda3 NT partition. After fighting with the fucking thing I finally gave it a primary since it has a tendency to not boot when in a logical.
sda4 Extended logical. And all my ext2 partitions.
Solaris. NO ROOM. It needs a primary. FreeBSD. NO ROOM. It needs a primary. etc, etc.
To clarifiy, understand that only a primary is a 'real' partition. An extended DOS partition, is no different then UFS. IE a primary that is logically subdivided.
When you create a logically subdivided partition, the entired area it occupies is locked only for logical use. Any space freed up (unless at the very end) can not be reallocted to another primary. Thus dealing only in primary partitions is a much more flexable and efficient when it comes to changing partitions on a 'live' machine.
Ideally we could start from scratch, rewrite the BIOS, and standardize the allocation of small for all partitioning and boot managment. We would then have...a workstation. : >
But the idea is to come up with SOMETHING that is easy to code, and slips into most system will no effort, and that WILL BE adopted and implemented by yo-yo's like Microsoft.