No Subject

["Lars S. Loevlie" <larssl@online.no>]

Thanx, Wing.

I'd really appreciate it if u could mail that "how-to" document to

larssl@online.no

And one more question: I think the dual boot method would suit me the
best, but I kinda thought one needed some application that runs before
any OS boots, and asks you to choose (f.example between Red Hat and
Win98...) ??

Lars

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Hi Lars,

I have two types of Dual-OS systems at home and at work.

I have a dual-boot setup where I can either boot up Win98 or Linux. This

allows only one OS to run at any given time. I had been running RedHat
5.2/6.0. I recently switched to Mandrake, which is built upon RedHat,
but
is easier to install and has a nice interface.

The other method allows me to run both Linux and Win98 at the same time.

This is achieved through the use of VMware(www.vmware.com) to create a
virtual machine. With vmware, you can either have Windows running under
Linux, or Linux under Windows. *smiles* I prefer Windows in the virtual
machine. ;)

For a Win9X/Linux, you should install windows first as it is less
friendly
to other installed OS's and will overwrite the MBR on the hard drive to
boot only itself. Just keep in mind to leave enough UNPARTITIONED space
for Linux. Linux has utilities to correctly partition that spare space.

I can email you the text file describing the procedure. I had begun to
write a howto in this email, but realised it would be excessively long.
^_^;;

Caveats:

1) A dual boot system can have problems if one of the two OS's crashes
and
causes drive corruption. It can result in an instability in both
OS's.

2) With a vmware enabled system, you will experience slowdowns due to
the
running of a virtual machine. But if you are doing development work,

you aren't exactly playing games. ;)

Currently, I've got VMware installations of Win98 and WinNT running
great
with neither system crashing, surprisingly enough. And when they do
crash,
it doesn't affect the stability of my entire system. *smiles* Not to
mention, I can do stuff in Linux when Win98 is doing some installation
work or grunt work in the background with Windows-Only software.

However, if you plan on being able to play fully accelerated 3d games
for
Windows, you may be happier running with a host OS of Win9X/NT and
running
VMware to experiment with Linux in a virtual machine. That way, you can
still play games and the like while Linux is sitting in a virtual
machine.
Just keep in mind you will most likely lose the stability benefits of
Linux this way.

A dual boot system would be best if you want to retain the best of both
worlds, but don't want a slowdown.

Good luck! ^_^

Wing.