hi all, im trying to set up my atom to be a somewhat of an all purpose super computer. essentially just nothing but gnome handling a ton of operating systems at once
i want this to be my partition setup

any way to get gnome to do all this? thx for any potential help!

Uh. I'm almost certain that GNOME is a desktop environment. Do you mean GRUB maybe?

Not only is GNOME a desktop environment, I kinda doubt GRUB will work with Win98, Win8 will take over for Win7's bootloader, and OS X may or may not boot at all. Oh, and your Win98 install may or may not run on hardware that can run Win8. You're looking at one giant CF here, IF you could get it to work at all, which I highly doubt. Have fun trying, though.

I think it sounds like an interesting nerd project, but it also has the potential to be a serious pain in the butt, so proceed with caution. I would suggest you install those operating systems in this order:

1.) Install Windows 98 first. Make it a primary partition, and put it at the very beginning of your first hard drive (Drive C:).
2.) Install WinXP x64 second.
3.) Windows 7
4.) Windows 8
5.) Ubuntu
6.) I don't know much about Hackintosh, but I'd probably advise to install it last. You could use a CD-ROM to boot it (like Rebel EFI), then you wouldn't have to try to install a bootloader on your hard drive. I doubt GRUB knows what to do with Mac OS, but maybe something might work!

Good luck!

Hackintosh on an Atom? Hmm... I can research that for you.

It's very possible; there are sites dedicated to putting OS X on netbooks.

Cool... uh, let me know what you find, I guess?

Of course there are. I was just speculating that sorting out the bootloader to work properly with that many different OS's might be non-trivial.

That's just my $0.02. I'll let someone else research the details of how to actually pull it off.

I'd suggest installing Win7 AFTER Win8, since Win8's bootloader is going to chain to Win7's anyway. Or better yet, put Win98 and Win7 in VHDs, and select those VHDs from 8's bootloader after getting kicked to it from GRUB. Getting OS X and Ubuntu to play nice is fairly easy, so that should solve most of the problems.

Win8 replaces 7's bootloader if present - this is the desired option anyway, since 8's bootloader can boot 7, but not vice-versa.

Windows 7 can be booted from VHD, but Windows 98 cannot.

It's certainly all possible, just not really worth the effort. But meh, whatever tickles your fancy I guess.

Hrm. Didn't know 98 couldn't run from VHD. Guess that idea's out. But yeah, this whole thing is kinda dodgy. I'm still curious as to why the OS that needs the least space is being given the most.

VHD Booting is only supported on Windows 7 and Windows 8 - it requires a special boot-time driver.

As for the illogical partitioning scheme - read his other posts. It should help you understand things clearer.

thx guys decided not to do this though as id rather have a stable machine to put my patients documentation on after refs messed up...

*Thanks

Sorry I couldn't resist

Interesting. I guess you mean GRUB...

And you'll do extended partitions, right? Because Windows systems before 8 have problems with GUID (GPT).