Dual Booting

[Hinrichisgod]

I'm looking around at custom pc's and came across one that has an OS with XP and then some Linux OS's. (Mandrake, Lycoris, Redhat, Gentoo). What exactly is Dual Booting? And on another note, what is the difference in these Linux OS's? Thanks

 

[Lone Wolf]

I'm looking around at custom pc's and came across one that has an OS with XP and then some Linux OS's. (Mandrake, Lycoris, Redhat, Gentoo). What exactly is Dual Booting? And on another note, what is the difference in these Linux OS's? Thanks

It just means you have two distinct/different operating systems loaded on your PC. When you boot up your PC, the user is presented with a menu option to choose one he/she wants. Note that it doesn't have to be on the same hard drive, it can be on different HDD, as long as it's in the same PC.

Usually it's done for a specific purpose. People dont' do it just for the hell of it since loading an OS on your HDD does take up some amount of space. Several years ago, I dual-booted with Win98 and W2K. I used Win98 for games that wouldnt' run on my W2K and used W2K for everything else because it's a very stable OS.

Pretty soon I will be installing Mandrake on my PC. That means I will have the option to boot up to 3 different OSes on my PC. And this is primarily for educational purposes because I'm very curious to know more about Linux.


Linux is a variation of UNIX OS. There are several types of Linux distributions such as Mandrake, Redhat, etc. I have never heard of Gentoo and Lycoris. Maybe someone else here can tell you what that is.

 

[Lone Wolf]

On the Linux question, I suggest you break your question up and post another question the the Linux forum and ask what the differences are (between the distributions) since there will be more knowledgeable people in that regard.