dual boot or virtual box...
 

I am currently having windows 7 installed on my laptop.
320 G HDD, 2 G ram, 2.2 Ghz, ddr3, core 2 duo.
I have downloaded 3 iso cds of debian 6, now the problem is that I am very confused about installing debian.

Either install debian in windows or windows in debian ?

Either dual boot them or use virtual box ?

If virtual box should be better then Should I format my laptop and install debian 6 using entire disk and then install virtual box in it and then install windows 7 in virtual box?

or

I should keep my current windows as it is and directly install debian in virtual box..?

I didn't ever used virtual box so I am new bee in this field.

Hi there,

that's entirely up to you. You should ask yourself the questions:

1. Do you need both systems (Debian/Win7) running at the same time, so they can communicate with each other?
   If yes, that rules a dual-boot configuration out and calls for using a VM instead.
   If no, I'd rather recommend a dual-boot setup where each system can use the full system resources (memory, CPU).
2. If the answer to the previous question was "yes":
   Which of the two systems (Debian/Win7) will you be using most of the time?
   Choose that as the primary system, and put the other one in a VM.

That's a different aspect: If you have a fully functional Windows installation, why knock it over? That might be another point for keeping the Windows installation intact, install VirtualBox on Windows, and then Debian in the VM.

[X] Doc CPU

I'd say with only 2gigs ram to dual-boot, as a vm will require atleast 512mb ram slowing the machine down.

I didnt undertood you answer.

My 2 cents. I prefer the VBox solution for a couple reasons.
1) I find that I want/need to interact with both OS's at the same time quite often.
2) I feel that it is slightly harder on the wear and tear of hardware to constantly reboot. (although this may be in my head)

A lean Linux install should run fine with that config, but I would be more concerned with attempting to run Win7 with 2GB of RAM. Even without the virtual environment, that's pushing the capabilities of the laptop.

If you can afford it, and your motherboard can take it, add more RAM.

2Gigs of memory is kind of low most os"es installed to vb. Vb will takeup atleast 25% of your memory & run quite slow.