Now that you know what the overall goal is, how do you get from here to there? First, understand that if you have a computer running Windows 7, that Windows 7′s boot manager is responsible for making sure that the system boots.

Suppose you need to chart some demographical or geographical data. Using OpenOffice.org's chart module you can present the data as a bar, pie, or even exploded donut chart. What you can't do, though, is to create a map chart that shows data distribution by continent, country, or region. To do this, you need the EuroOffice Map Chart Professional (EOMCP) extension.

But by the time you are done with this tutorial, GRUB 2 will be in the Partition Boot Record (PBR) of the boot partition of the Fedora installation, and Windows 8′s boot program will be restored to the boot manager, making it the primary boot manager, so that every time the computer is rebooted, you will see this screen, or a bland, black one.

By the time Ubuntu 10.04 LTS rolls around next April, Canonical is interested in seeing Ubuntu boot on an Intel Atom netbook (specifically the Dell Mini 9) in less than ten seconds. These incredibly fast boot time goals even led Canonical to decide against investing more time in enhancing the boot experience with Red Hat's Plymouth.

The patience of today’s computer user is low. Time is, very much, of the essence. And for some reason that adage applies in spades to Linux computer and Linux server boot times. Although less than 1 or 2 minutes doesn’t seem like an eternity, when booting a computer it is.

A USB boot disk is a cool idea. It allows you to carry your favorite operating system in your pocket. Since all modern PC provide USB boot from BIOS , you can use any computer and work on your on desktop. It is also possible to make data persistent. With ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jaqckalope it is very easy to make an install disk. Here is how you can do it

Bootchart is an extremely simple, extremely handsome application that allows you to profile your Linux boot process, to measure the loading times of different services, to compare kernels and distributions, to identify bottlenecks and improve the performance of your system, and then to display the results in a professional-looking chart.

Apple realized some time ago that people might want to dual-boot their new machines so they created Boot Camp. Indeed, Boot Camp does make it easy to dual-boot and they even give you all of the drivers needed to make Windows support their hardware... but what about triple-booting?

For speed freaks, you could improve the boot up time using friendly GUI application, Ubuntu BootUp Manager or BUM in short. Using BUM you can make the PC load only those system services that you need, killing unnecessary ones.