To those that are running dual OS

[Larry_OHF]

Would you give me your thoughts on what this question is asking me?
Yes, this is another homework assignment. I wanted some input from people who actually do this stuff.

Compare Virtual PC 2004 and disk partitioning with respect to running more than one operating system on a single PC.
Select the superior method.

[Bungleau]

Larry,

While I'm not running dual OS at this point, it sounds like it's asking what's better... to install two OS on the same machine, or to install one OS and install a second (or third, or more) OS on a virtual machine in the physical machine.

My take, FWIW... VMs are better because they can easily be refreshed and/or replaced. And you can easily switch from the "base" OS to the VM OS, and even pass info between the two.

I suspect others with better and more detailed knowledge will pipe up shortly...

[dplax]

It's rather different. With a VM like Virtual PC or VMWare you are running the guest OS on the host OS.

I'll focus on virtualization, since you probably know how an OS runs natively on a machine. Under virtualisation there are several positives and a few negatives. Negatives include reduced performance, since the guest OS is being run as a process on the host and reduced capabilities. Graphics cards aren't yet well virtualised, so virtual machines can't use them well and the graphics take a pretty big hit in virtual machines. Don't expect to run games on them. Memory and processor usage, while not as good as on a normally installed OS is pretty good nowadays. Another negative is the added boot time, since to launch a virtual machine you have to launch the host and then the VM.

As for positives, the virtual machine is isolated from the host OS. If it gets infected it's quite easy to simply reinstall. Most recent virtualisation programs allow the state of a virtual machine to be saved, and you can even save several states and load up whichever you want. Virtualisation also allows you to run an OS on hardware it shouldn't be able to run on. Like say Mac OS on a typical PC. And virtualisation allows you to run two (or more) OS's simultaneously, which if you are a programmer or web developer, allows you to quickly test and deploy solutions on different platforms.

I'm pretty sure I could think of more, but that should get you started.

[dplax]

On the other hand, since we are specifically talking about Virtual PC 2004 here...back then it was pretty hard to install anything other than Windows (or DOS) on Virtual PC (Linux was possible, but quite hard), still it would allow for different versions of Windows to run on the same machine.

[ElfBane]

A bit more input...in the bad old days(2004, amazing isn't it?) HDD weren't very large compared to today. A dual boot would require you to decide on how to partition your drive, I.E. how much of the HDD you wanted to allocate to the second OS. Anything allocated to the 2nd OS area cannot be used, and usually cannot even be seen, by the primary OS. Not an ideal option for a gamer, since games fill up a HDD fast.

Also, if you are trying to dual 2 relatively recent OS's, the hardware is usually not an issue. But when you run a recent OS and dual DOS6.22 or Win98, then hardware can become a problem. That game that had good graphics in 98 (there were some,,Might and Magic VI comes readily to mind), may not run at all or cause frequent crashes when trying to run on new video cards.

I usually run at least one of my PC's (I have 5 up and running) with a dual boot to DOS6.22. The only VM software that I currently run is DOSBox, however. The DOSBox runs 2 old DOS games that I like, Micro League Baseball IV and Kingmaker,, and it evens emulates the original sound perfectly. Hope this helps.

[Larry_OHF]

Wow...I appreciate the help guys. This actually puts it in perspectives that I had not even considered with detail that I would not have come up with alone. Thanks alot!

[Felix The Assassin]

I was thinking this was the cohabitation between Mac and Mac Power PC, allowing some series to run MS on a Mac, which is more than likely why it fell to the wayside.

Dual boot, no. However, to say, one wanted to try Linux on a MS host, then one would use the "Live" CD for a trial run. As mentioned, this would allow the host hardware to be accessed by Linux to "see": 1. If it would work on the rig. 2. To give the user an idea of what a Linux OS could do.

I did dual boot back in the day, and on a 120GB drive, found WinXP SP2 was a resource hog, and relished it's extra "space" on a HD. However, those days are long gone.

Get yourself a CD from here, and give it a shot.
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

[MagiK]

VM's are better when it comes to disk space and quick refreshes, and are sometimes easier to re-configure, but two OS's have a performance advantage that I've never seen a vm match. Also the free VM software that is available has some serious compatiblity issues with some hardware funtionality. I am currently running XP and Vista64 in a dual boot system, I dumped the VM software because honestly I use mostly Vista64 now and rarely need anything else.
In a corporate environment VM's really start to come into their own.
JUst my opinion.

[Olorin]

When I started grad school, I got a Mac laptop because all the research computers were either Unix boxes or Macs. When my old PC died, I was left with a stack of games that I couldn't play anymore.

When I had the funds to buy a new desktop, I opted for a MacMini with bootcamp. I could use VMWare to simulate the Windows machine, but I wanted to get full performance while playing games. It's working well so far.

Negs: Dual boot means having to reboot to access the other OS.
WinXP cannot see the MacOS partition (though I set up my drive so that the Mac can read/write to the XP drive).

Plusses: Full speed performance for gaming.
No risk of viruses crossing from XP to Mac as XP can't even see the Mac partition.

I've also disabled the internet connection entirely on XP. I used it to download the updates when I first installed, then turned it off. Sometimes it's annoying when I want to check the 'net while booted into XP, but I almost always have my laptop at home too. If I want to download patches or mods for games, I do that on the Mac and drop the files into the XP partition. The positive is that I've never had a Windows install running so smoothly (no AV needed, and no spyware slowing down the system).