dual operating systems

D

darkslyde

New Member
hey is there a way i can have two operating systems on my laptop and the same time? and choose between them. i already have windows 7 but i would also like to have linux? any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Yes. If you have another partition on your hard drive, you can run the Linux install as normal, and simply choose that free partition. When you boot, you'll see that the new install is added to your OS boot menu.
 
Just create one free empty partition with enough big capacity for your second OS and then instal that second OS to that partition.

Just be careful to not format,mess or destroy your primary partition with Windows 7 OS ;)



Cheers!
 
Another option is to use virtual software like VirtualBox. That way you can have multiple OSes running at the same time, no need to reboot.

On the laptop I'm using right now, I have 14 other OSes installed in VMs that I can bring up whenever I want. I can't run them all at the same time (not enough RAM) but I can run several of them at the same time as my main OS of Win 7 HP.
 
Last edited:
strollin said:
Another option is to use virtual software like VirtualBox. That way you can have multiple OSes running at the same time, no need to reboot.

On the laptop I'm using right now, I have 14 other OSes installed in VMs that I can bring up whenever I want. I can't run them all at the same time (not enough RAM) but I can run several of them at the same time as my main OS of Win 7 HP.
Click to expand...

yea ive been wanting to try that for a while is virtual box free? or is there a better one that isnt free?
 
darkslyde said:
yea ive been wanting to try that for a while is virtual box free? or is there a better one that isnt free?
Click to expand...

Virtual Box is free and works very well. Though, it can't access your Video Card, so you are stuck with virtual video drivers.

There are others, most notably VMWare, which is licensed software, I believe. It's all preference, though.
 
also another stupid question can i use the virtual machine like a sandbox computer so if the guest os gets infested with viruses they cant spread to the host os?
 
darkslyde said:
also another stupid question can i use the virtual machine like a sandbox computer so if the guest os gets infested with viruses they cant spread to the host os?
Click to expand...

Yep. When you create a VM, it simply creates a virtual HDD, that is a single file stored on your physical HDD. Anything you do on the VM is restricted to that 1 file.
 
With VMs you can also take snapshots which are similar to system restore points where you capture an image of the VM as it is. If you need to restore for any reason you can just revert to the snapshot.
 
if you download and make the linux boot disk you can select dual boot and adjust the partition sizes with the installation wizard, I did it and it worked fine, until I restarted and the linux wouldn't boot anymore (this was a couple of years ago and I used the very minimum space for the linux, and windows still worked fine after linux quit)

If you do this you need to make sure you had a windows restore/install disk.
 
Hi, I like to install two type of OS in my lap, I like to put windows 7 and Vista from this which one i want to install first then how much memory space will required for both in separate drive..
 
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