Newbie Question
 

Hello All,

As I am new to the LinuxQuestions.org I try to get a burning question of my chest;

I am an IBM laptop user (R50p) and want to use multiple os on one machine;

What would you recommend?

Situation 1 VMware on Win with Multiple x86 images of Linux distros

Situation 2 VMware on Linux with One Win (need for Work) and multiple Linux Distros

Situation 3 More than one partition and a multiboot of Distros and Win.

Can you also make me aware of pitfalls on the situations? Currently I am using situation 1
but am more convinced 3 will provide less issues.

Does anyone have good experience with Situation 2?


In any case this is my newbie question; I am looking forward to your reaction.

Thanks in advance for your time.

C.

Registered Linux user #424536

Use Situation 3. Both OSes should run natively. Emulators and virtual machines are inherently slower and far less robust than the real thing.

Certainly #2 gives one the most versatility. Dual-booting can be a pain in the butt and not a very productive way to get any work done. It will also allow you to play around to your heart's content with a sorts of different Linux distros and other o/s's.

I'd agree with rickh, dealing with emulators can get messy and you probably won't get the most out of each distro by not running it natively.