Additional Operating System on My Computer

From what I read, Chrome is Linux based, so I'd skip that for now.

Find a reliable download site for Linux Mint, which I think is the latest. It will tell you the system requirements.

I have to warn you though, I did this and if you don't like it, getting it off and repartitioniing is a bit more complicated. A few points.

Linux and Windows will both work on one hard drive, separately. There is no communication between the two.

If you download and use Linux, you will also have to download new drivers to run printers, scanners, etc.

For people like me, that are not big computer nerds, there is a learning curve. Don't expect to get into Linux and have it be just like Windows, it's not.

That said, I did install it and had it running fairly quickly, BUT, I also uninstalled it. I just don't have time to learn a new OS. The people that take the time though, end up deleting Windows and never turning back. Good luck!

I tried it once. The Linux GRUB manager wound up hosing the XP install.

Windows can also mess with a Linux install.

The safest way is to use the BIOS to boot to separate drives which hold the different OS's. Also that way you don't need to run partitioning software.

You can install multiple operating system in a single computer in many ways. The safest way to do it is installing each OS on separate hard disk, not just a partition of the same hard disk. If you can afford to lost all files your hard disk, then you can go with partition and install different OS in each partition. I wrote a blog before on how to install Linux in Windows machine, you can check it out and I hope it can help. Here is the link: How to install Linux in Windows machine.

I have on several occasions installed dual boot systems with Windows and Linux on a variety of different equipment, and have never encountered a problem. I always use the LiveCD (LiveDVD) procedure downloaded from the Internet to partition the hard drive- never encountered a problem (one must, of course, have Windows on the first boot sector, and one should clean up the Windows installation first- empty the trash, delete temporary files, etc, and then defrag). I have never encountered a need to use two hard disks for such an installation. I have also found that components that don't work under Windows (sound, Bluetooth, Wifi, etc.) suddenly start working again when loading Linux, without having to hunt down drivers, etc. Most printers and scanners I have worked with just work under Linux- the CUPS package that is a basic component of a Linux installation contains a large selection of drivers that are generally automatically matched to any printer you may have (although there may be some features of some equipment that may not be supported on occasion). Other components I have used (i.e., RS232 to usb adapter) just work under Linux, without the need for additional drivers, while under Windows, I generally spend a great deal of time searching for drivers for components that should work "out of the box". Of course, when working with a pre-installed Windows configuration, the manufacturer has already taken care of this. I have never encountered a problem with running the two operating systems on the same machine. (An interesting feature- one can access documents in the Windows sector from Linux, but not vice versa). I will admit, I have limited experience with setting up dual boot systems with Windows Vista, and no experience with Windows 7. There may be issues with these operating systems with which I am not familiar. I use almost exclusively Ubuntu releases, everything since 7.04, but not yet 10.04, with no problems. I have looked at some of the Ubuntu derivatives (Mint being one- Mint has the significant advantage of including proprietary Codexes that the Ubuntu purists will not include, if video is an important part of your computer experience. Others I like are CAELinux, an engineering package, and Vinux, a package specifically for the visually impaired, all based on Ubuntu). I have also looked at Red Hat (Fedora) and SUSE distros, but find Ubuntu preferable as a personal preference. SUSE appears more targeted at the enterprise. There seems to be more interest in scientific applications (finite elements, mathematics, biological applications, astronomy, etc.) in the Ubuntu community, but that perception may be the result of my personal interests. There is nothing really special about Ubuntu that would make it preferable for scientific applications, other than that seems to be where the community focuses.

There are over a thousand Linux distributions available, but there seem to be three broad classes- those derived from Ubuntu, Red Hat (Fedora) and SUSE. A good place to start is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions. These lists are not going to be up to date- it seems there is a new distro offered daily, if not more frequently. A lot of distros are now being offered for thumb drive installations as well- there is a special program that can build a bootable thumb drive from most of the popular distros (although I had better luck building a thumb drive with Ubuntu 8.04 rather than later distros). One still gets better performance, in my opinion, when running the package from a hard disk install rather than a LiveCD/DVD or a thumb drive.

I have completely removed older Linux distros that I no longer needed from machines without causing problems with other operating systems on the same machine. I have also installed both 32-bit and 64-bit distros on the same machine with not problems (of course, the machine must have a 64-bit system for this to work).

Exploring Linux is a whole lot more user-friendly than it was just four or five years ago...

There are basically 4 ways of doing this, and I have tried them all. The first is to install the additional operating systems on separate hard drives and to remove and replace the hard drives as required. One of my machines has a tray and caddy system which makes this very easy, but otherwise this is for the people that like screwing their PCs (pun intended). The second is to run the second system from a CD. As noted, this works for a limited number of Linux distros but is relatively limited in speed and capacity. A more practical method is to use a partition manager (I used to use Paragon, free edition available at http://www.paragon-software.com/home/pm-express/download.html), with which you create separate partitions (can be on separate hard drives) and a boot manager to choose which system to boot up. Effectively you can have as many systems in parallel as you want, but when you want to switch between them you have to power down and restart. My favourite method is therefore to run one system *within* another system using virtualisation software. Again, a free version is available from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads. You start with a host system and then load the guest system, which runs as an entirely separate system, albeit rather slower, with control of the guest access to the host system. For those of you with Macintoshes, my current setup is (paid-for) VMWare running 5 different versions of Windows and some Linux, all as guests under OS X. Switching between guest and host is instantaneous.

I'll write down the steps I took yesterday to install Ubuntu 10.04 alongside Windows 7 (which was already installed, and was occupying the whole hardrive) on my girlfriend's netbook yesterday:

1. Download Ubuntu 10.04 (700 MB). http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download
2. Create a LiveCD on an USB flash drive (you need at least 1GB & it's easy, since there's an app to do this. Check step 2 on the above link). You can also burn it to a cd, but I didn't do that.
   
   
   RECOMMENDATIONS: Before going further, backup the files you want to keep (burn to a cd/dvd, use an external hdd, flash drive, etc), clean your trash & defrag your drive.
   
3. Boot from the LiveCD to do a test drive. You might need to change the BIOS boot priorities.
   
   WARNING: AFTER you partition your hard drive, you NEED to restart your pc and log onto Windows to let it rescan your system, BEFORE installing ubuntu.
   
   
4. Partition the hard drive using GParted (it's included on the Ubuntu 10.04 LiveCD, under System>Administration). Reduce the size of the windows partition and leave unallocated space (for ubuntu). You need about 2-3 gb to install ubuntu, but leave extra for more applications/files. How much extra depends on you. You can always resize all partitions anyway.
5. Restart your PC and let it boot to windows. It will do a system scan.
6. Reboot to the LiveCD.
7. Install to the biggest space available on the hard drive.

And that's it. When you restart, you'll be prompted to choose which OS to boot.