I've noticed a lot of people say that they dual-boot two or more distros. I was just wondering, whats the point of doing this?

I can maybe see it if one of the distros is something specialised like Backtrack, but whats the point in having a system that dual-boots, for example, OpenSUSE and Fedora?

I use only one distro and there's nothing I've ever needed to do that couldn't be done in my distro and required a different one.

So is there any particular reason that people use two or three different linux distros for everyday use?

I used to but there's really no point once you get settled on one distro.

One reason might be to experiment with other distributions, but since I got a new laptop, I use my old laptop for the experiments and those are becoming rarer because when you get down to it, it's all Linux at heart. It is much more interesting to try out something new.

Its an exercise in installers,GRUB.LILO and it increases your abilities with partitioning,LVM,it keeps you in touch with all the necessary moves to do with installing.I had 12 at one time on one box,you cant really look after that many so I have got it down to 6...each has its own merit and they are all accessible from each other,there are many advantages in having multiple operating systems, not least is that if anything goes wrong with one of them then you can use the others to fix it...its more difficult to begin with but it takes the pressure off as you have all you need right there in front of you and you can take all the time in the world to fix things as you can just change over to one that works,plus you can compare whats on each system with each other,I could not get by with just one that would be too stressful and I need more to think about. LOL its a personal choice,its not for everyone.

lol - every machine I have (at home) has the Windoze it came with plus more than one Linux.
Even the crappy Atom netbook (not mine) has XP plus 2 Ubuntu plus (currently) Bodhi.

Nothing is universal despite what the various distros try to tell you.

I am not everyone so I will speak only for myself.

It is fun.

Because they can and I can see no reason why not. This need diminishes once you've found a distro you really like. Having said that I still dualboot slackware stable and current.

I keep windows installed for work related purposes. I may have at least two distros, one as my main OS and maybe the second one to try different distros. I hardly distro hop as much as I used to back in the day.

I have no need to install more than one system on a single hard-drive. If I want to test a different OS, I put it on an external hard-drive. But like sycamorex, quite a few Debian users dual-boot Debian Stable and Testing, so they can experiment with the Testing system without harming the Stable system.

Actually early on, I had to limit my choices to a few distros simply because I didn't have the bandwidth to download several hundred Megabytes (or GB) of ISOs...

Most of us long-time users probably had our first taste of Linux from a CD-ROM shipped with a PC magazine. I did.

These days I have lost the desire to try out every single distro under the sun. I feel like almost every Linux is just the same with a few superficial changes, and this is actually a sign that Linux has really matured well. Yes, some distros do ship with highly customized or patched kernels and specialized apps to achieve specific needs (low-latency multimedia etc.) but other than that, no reason except personal preference.

I think the more "real work" we start doing with Linux, the less we feel like experimenting or changing or multi-booting several Linux distributions. It's safer to test new distributions either in VirtualBox or VMWare or a separate computer. Dual booting is risky if you make a small mistake in partitioning while installing a new distribution and end up overwriting an existing distribution. This can happen to the most experienced of us at times.

For educational purposes. Different distros do things differently.
e.g.

Upstart v Systemd v BSD init v SysVinit.

or

rpm v dpkg v slackware tgzs v pacman


What are the pros and cons of each? Yes, you can read up on them, but it's never the same as spending a little hands-on time with them.


Obviously, if you're an end user then you probably don't want to know or care about this stuff, but developers, hobbyists or anyone with a professional interest in systems design/admin will want to have an understanding of these things.

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Because Puppy can rescue a Debian Testing install without having to carry around the live cd or pendrive when on the road. Also, it does not take up much space. Also, you can search for a solution while your other OS is unbootable,unconnectable,unviewable, you get the idea.

I tripple boot my computer. My current main system is Debian stable, my other is Slackware which i have on because i like the philosophies incorporated with it, but i don't tend to use it much anymore because i don't have enough time to resolve dependencies, especially for some gnome packages i like, like banshee. My last partition is my experimental partition which is what i try different distros on, currently it holds debian stable, upgraded with Mepis 11 repos, which ran successfully and i have duplicated the procedure onto my main system. Soon that third partition will be whiped and i'll test arch out, and opensuse again.

I agree with all the guys here.. there is only one other reason that wasnt mentioned.. some people have a few different distros installed on one system simply because maybe they need to do development in the different distros because they need to build that distros packages and transfer them to another system. Maybe they use one of those distros on the work computers and if they have that particular distro installed on their system at home then they can just build whatever they need on their home system. Then they can just transfer it to the other system. Of course like it was mentioned some people just like having the different distros to either become familiar with them or just for the fun of it. I have had 10 different boxes running at home all at the same time and each one of them was dual-boot. So, I think for the normal user the reason is probably simply for fun. I am sure there are several people out there that can think of a few reasons they have multiple distros installed on one system. What do you think guys?

I have done that for latest git pianobar source file in AntiX, Then installed my built package in Puppy.
Because pandora radio keeps breaking pianobar.

Like the previous poster said. "It's fun." For those motivated to learn and tinker. I am pretty new to Linux and playing with multiple distros helps put my mind at ease.