Possible to have multiple O.S.'s on your machine?

Question

can a standard pc contain a windows os as well as a linux-based os, and can they be used simultaniously?

Answer 1

Yes, you can have both Windows and Linux installed on the same PC. The best way to do it is to start with an empty hard drive. Install Windows first, and partition what space you want to use for Windows as FAT32, not NTFS. (This is important because Linux still has problems writing to NTFS partitions). Don't allocate all your space for Windows; leave a fair amount (8-10 gigabytes at least) unallocated.

Then install whichever flavor of Linux you prefer. I like Kubuntu, but there are plenty of distributions out there. When you run the installer, you should be able to allocate the unallocated space you left over from installing Windows. During the install process you'll be prompted to install a bootloader; I suggest GRUB.

GRUB should automatically find both your Windows and Linux installs and give you a graphical menu when you boot up your system.

You can't really have both operating systems running at the same time without something like VMWare, which costs extra.

Answer 2

Yes you can have multiple OS's on the same machine. Whether its multiple versions of windows likw windows 98, Windows 2000 pro and windows XP as examples. You can even mix and match too with windos and a version of linux. Whteher its windows and Ubuntu, Windows and Sun microsystems. To work them together at the same time. I would suggest like one of the others had mentioned. If your working with Ubuntu linux as an example. You would need wine in order to do that. But you can have multiple OS's on the same system without a hitch. But its 1 OS at a time.

:D

Answer 3

Yes you can have them on your computer, but no, you can't use them simultaneously without extra software like VMWare (which is free, btw).
You'll need to look into dualbooting the system if you don't want to use VMWare. What it boils down to:
- install Windows first
- make sure part of the disk is unpartitioned. Install Linux on that. Most Linux versions will pick up on the installed Windows and install a boot option for it in the boot menu.
Make sure you have backups of all your important files before you start installing anything! :)

Answer 4

You can have a Linux based OS for example and run a Windows module from Linux. Yes you can. And viceversa too i think.

Answer 5

yes. you can run windows and Linux.. Your hard drive must be partitioned to do this. A friend of mine was playing around and installed win 95,98, ME, XP & Linux on one computer just to see if he could...lol but no, you cant run them simultaniously.

Answer 6

but of coarse!

PROBLEM!!! you can install a program like "boot majic"(and there are others, but that's the only one I've used) and use any two operating systems you want. I had win XP and win 98(I had some dusiness software that would not work on anything newer than 98)
BUT, when you do you will usually loose what is on the hard drive(so you need to save anything you do not want to loose) In my case they formated my HD when they installed boot majic.
Now why would you want multiply systems?

Answer 7

They can't run at the same time, but I run Windows XP and Fedora Core 4 on the same laptop.

Answer 8

You can run as many OS's as you please. (1)

If you have a large amount of RAM (>512MB) you can use products such as VMWare to run Linux on top of Windows or vice versa. VMWare server is free software (2). I use it and love it!

Answer 9

yea but i hear its unstable if not dont correctly