MasterP said:
Where do you think GRUB latches in at?
There’s a very specific process that an OS must go through to boot. The computer doesn’t see an OS and magically decide to start booting it. Linux is no different. Now if you want to split hairs and say linux doesn’t control the mbr or bootsector knowing full well that GRUB does then you’re essentially arguing to argue as linux is the only OS that uses it. It’d be like saying Microsoft BCD controls the boot process, not windows when you know *edited* well only Vista/Win2008/Win7 use it.
Nickname:
I’m saying that you never need to put grub anywhere near the mbr to load Linux. You’re saying you can’t do it thru the Windows chainloader and I’m telling you you can. Take grub (not installed) make it into a .bin file and put it on C: (again NON LINUX) and point boot.ini at it (again NOT IN LINUX). The Windows bootloader will see the extra OS in the boot.ini file which you then select. It goes into the grub.bin file and starts init from that which loads Linux.
tl;dr you can load Linux without putting grub in the MBR.