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

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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.

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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.