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Ranish Partition Manager revived (Announce)

posted by bretjohn Homepage E-mail, Rio Rancho, NM, 14.11.2022, 15:12

> I was not aware BootIt until now. Surely will have a look at it. But if I
> understand correctly it is a commercial software?
> https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-bare-metal/
It is commercial software (not open-source) and works under a very different methodology than a partition manager. While it does work with multiple partitions, the thing that makes it useful for me is that it allows booting from multiple operating systems (including multiple versions of DOS) from the SAME partition. In my test environment, I have about 20 different versions of DOS (different manufacturers including MS-DOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS, FreeDOS, and PTS-DOS) in a single partition and can select which one to boot. I can also boot into different versions of Windows and Linux with it. It moves around the files needed for booting. For my purposes that's a much better methodology than dozens of partitions.

Again, a very different methodology than a partition manager, but I think both are needed.

>> The other thing you might want to think about adding is support for GPT.
> I am afraid that would result in a nearly complete rewrite. For now I will
> concentrate on making it usable for disks of up to 2TB. I think that would
> make it a reasonably usable partition / boot manager for "legacy" operating
> systems.
Agreed, for now that's what you should concentrate on. Eventually DOS (at least FreeDOS) is going to need to learn how to "get along with" GPT, though. Newer OS's (like Windows 11) require GPT and won't even boot from MBR any more (they claim MBR isn't "secure"). Unless everyone is going to be 100% satisfied running DOS in Virtual Machines instead of bare metal (I won't), we'll need to do something different.

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