fedora & windows 7
 

I am new to the windows and Linux world.
I have worked with Mac's for a while.

I now need to worwith a windows machine, a friend of mine has lent me a Dell D630. It already has windows 7 installed but I need to run Fedora as well.

What I would like to do is to be able to run either Fedora or 7 as the boot system and also run Fedora in a VM while running windows.

My friend has no Idea how to do this so I have come here.

I would be thankful for any help.

Welcome to the forums! Fedora has excellent install instructions on their site, why don't you give it a read and then come back if you have specific questions:

http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora

Regarding your virtual machine question, there are several options available. Personally I use VirtualBox: http://virtualbox.org

Installing Fedora in a virtual machine is the identical process to installing it on a "real" machine, except that you don't need to prepare a Live CD/USB because you can mount the .iso directly in your virtual machine's virtual CD-ROM drive.

How do I format the disk so that I can seperate have partisions for windows and Fedora. Therefore be able to boot the machine as either a Fedora machine or a windows machine.

This is called "dual booting" and is quite easy. Here's a link to the relevant chapter of the Fedora Install Guide: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/...setup-x86.html

Obviously I recommend reading the entire Install Guide (not just this one chapter) and having a copy on hand throughout the install process.

You may wish to do your Virtual Machine install first as practice, because a VM is a "sandbox" environment with zero risk of damage to your "host" Windows install. Once you know your way around the Fedora installer, then you can do your "real" dual-boot install.

fedora Installation
 

Thank you.

I will try to work on it as soon as I can but work and family do get in the way.

will post how I have done.

I can't tell whether you are asking to be able to run the same install of Fedora in both modes (directly booted and inside a VM).

There are lots of instructions available for shrinking the Windows 7 partition(s) then installing Fedora in new partition(s) to be dual boot with Windows.

There are lots of instructions available to install a VM in Windows and install Fedora inside the VM, so Fedora is running from a virtual disk that is really a file inside the Windows file system.

If I were doing this, I would want the two Fedoras together. That would require the ability to run Linux in a VM but from a real partition rather than from a virtual disk. I don't know whether that is possible or if so how to do it. If you didn't mean that (if two disconnected Fedora installs, one virtual and one physical are OK) then sorry for the distraction. If you wanted them together, make that clear so that some VM expert might tell you what is possible.

fedora & wintel
 

IN the mac world it is possible to install windows in its own partition so you can boot directy from that partition. You can then usse eother parallels or Fusion to be able to run the windows install while you are running the mac OS. This is what I want to do.

You can install directly to the hard drive in VMware Workstation and boot from either Workstation or load it up as dual partition system. Perhaps the functionality is available on VirtualBox or VMware player but I am unsure.