Dual boot on Linux

[montejr]

I am new to Linux and have an easy question. I believe that it is possible to have a dual boot Linux machine. Is this correct? So I could install Linux 7.2 and 8.0 on the same box?

To take this further, could I have my database running on 8.0 and my apache web server running on 7.2 and have both functioning at the same time?

Thanks - I greatly appreciate any help.

Monte

[trickster]

Hi,

You can have different versions of different OS's installed on your machine. However, you can't have them running at the same time.

At boot-up, you must choose what OS to boot from.

[Tyr_7BE]

When you say Linux, can I assume you mean either RedHat or Mandrake? Linux itself is about to arrive at version 2.6, but RedHat and Mandrake are both in the ranges of 7-8-9-ish. If that is indeed the case, I urge you to consider Debian (http://www.debian.org/ ) or Fedora ( http://fedora.redhat.com/ ) as RedHat has ceased support for its end-user product, and Mandrake's future is still a little unstable (plus there's talk of including advertisements in the distribution to increase profits for a dying workhorse...something you definitely don't want). Debian and Fedora are the two major community-supported distributions. I can tell you from experience that Debian is extremely robust, and I've heard pretty good things about Fedora as well. As for your question...

A dual boot is possible and extremely common. This means that when you start up your machine, you can choose EITHER one OS OR another.

As far as running them simultaneously, that's not yet possible. I believe it was Intel who has unveiled design docs for a processor that is capable of running multiple simultaneous operating systems, but that's the future. Currently the only way computers can do something like this is to use a virtual environment such as VMWare, but VMWare is pricey. I believe there's a free drop-in-replacement for VMWare now (I read it on slashdot a few weeks ago), but I don't know what it's called or how well it performs. All I know is that it was developed by some American university.

Hope that answers your question.