Greetings all,

Okay, brand new to Linux here...

Running a home-built, Windows 7 Home Edition system with 8 gigs ram (had 16, and I'll be darned if 8 didn't up and die on me in less than a year!), an i3 Intel CPU, and an Nvidia GTX 650.

I need to know which, between running virtual box or a partition (plenty of hard drive space) would be advisable for both testing and learning Linux (I'm thinking right now of going with Ubuntu Mate)?

If a virtual box, are there some suggestions for which one to use?

Any input would be greatly welcome.

Thanks much,

Starkman

I suggest you start with a free virtual machine. Your system should be well supported. Starting off with a virtual machine offers fast starts, little need to configure drivers and it's almost fool proof. There is almost no chance you can bork your windows system unless you do something like attach the windows partition. I always use virtual hard drive as files and almost never attach a physical disk.

I almost always have Qemu, virtualbox and vmplayer going. I suggest you consider virtualbox or vmplayer. You actually have a third choice too if you wish. Pretty sure you could get VirtualPC running if you buypass some silly MS stuff. Their web page seems to say you can't but really you can.

Great, thanks so much!!

Starkman