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how do you install 2 operating systems on one computer?
I have windows vista and i want to know how to put another operating system like linux on my pc so i can boot up in linux. Please be as detailed as possible... : )
Public Comments
- there is 2 ways to go about this. you can actually install 2 OS on your machine or you can install a virtual machine. I like the second way better, ill explain why. The simplest (and free) utility for this is the Microsoft virtial PC 2007. Download it from the microsoft site. install it and in it you can load the LInux OS. The linux install will think that is being installed on the hardware itself. Check out VMware, they make a much better product that the microsoft virtual pc, but its not free. The reason why i like this better than installing 2 os in hte same machine is that LInux can be a little hard to configure depending on the hardware you have. The good thing is that most linux distros come with a live cd, that you can boot from just to see if linux would work on your machine. For this use Ubuntu since its very user friendly. After you boot form the cd to check it out you can install the os if you would like, it will ask you in which partition you wnat to intall the new OS, dont overwrite your windows partition. If you didnt make a sepparate partition before you installed windows in the first place (this is the most likely case) im not sure if it will let you create a partition by taking space from the win partition. If it doesnt let you, then you can use a product like partition magic to affect the partition without having to wipe out your computer. (there are free utilities like partition magic it doesnt have to be partition magic itself). I would say go with the virtual pc first if you like it and feel good about ubuntu then you can move to the more complicated task of installing win and linux on the same machine as native OSes.
- You download the iso file of whatever Linux distro you want to install, burn a bootable CD with Nero or Power iso. Then put that disc into your CD drive and reboot. Follow instructions and you're done. After that when you restart your PC, it will ask you which OS you want to boot into. Here are some good distros. Pick one: http://www.linuxmint.com/ http://www.opensuse.org/ http://www.ubuntu.com/ Whatever distro you choose, please read the installation instructions online before trying to install.
