An Active Partition in the context of Linux and other operating systems refers to the partition on a hard drive that contains the bootable operating system. When a computer starts, the BIOS or UEFI firmware looks for the active partition to load the operating system’s bootloader, which then initiates the boot process. Typically, only one partition can be marked as active on a disk, and this is crucial for systems using traditional BIOS. In Linux, the concept of an active partition is most relevant when dual-booting with other operating systems like Windows, where the active partition is usually where the bootloader (e.g., GRUB) resides.
