In my opinion a "real" running OS is always better than virtualized; however it depends a bit on what you need. Keep in mind, that (if we're now talking about somewhat normal end-user computers and not supercomputers or such)
* virtualization lets you run two operating systems simultaneously, and is good if you need them both at the same time
* you can still have virtualized operating system(s) while having multiboot
* a virtual machine is never as speedy as a real one, so unless you have a very powerful machine, or are ok with the fact that the virtualized OS might (read: probably will) feel slow and sticky, you're better off with a real one
* harddisk-installed "real-machine" operating systems are slightly more difficult to install and manage than virtualized (because for a virtual machine you can just give a file where it creates the "harddisk", which it resides solely on), so if you're going to do a lot of (re/)installs, or "just want to try", a virtual machine might be better
Overall I think that, unless you have a reason to run two operating systems on the same machine simultaneously, or you're just going to test, try and throw away some operating systems, you are better off with real HD installs. Note that changing disk order or removing or adding disks may cause some trouble (mainly with your bootloader configuration, which is rather easy to fix).
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