Can linux os be installed over and above Windows and operated at will?
Sunday, December 19th, 2010 at
02:01
can one install Linux o s on the pc( which already has Windows2000/xp )on another partition of the hard disc (already created in it ) and work on either system at will ? If yes , what will be required ?And can one get the Linux free of cost ?
Tagged with: hard disc • Linux • partition
Filed under: Linux
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Yes it can. Linux is USUALLY free. Well, most distributions are anyway. go to http://www.distrowatch.com/ to find a distrobution for you. Stay away from ubuntu unless you want to be made fun of by the rest of the linux community.
Yes you can. Download Ubuntu (open source Linux OS), and when it comes to install just choose the partition size with the slider, and you should be able to select your boot option at startup. Make sure you have enough room on your hard drive though!
Yes, multi boot is possible. But if your computer is not too old (good CPU and enough RAM) then consider using VirtualBox it would allow you to run other OSs without having to reboot. The will run inside an application window. The other OSs work inside a file that VirtualBox sees as a virtual hard drive. so you can use gparted to recover the 3rd partition space.
I have done this on a couple of computers, even my Acer Aspire One 11.6" netbook. It’s slow when running the other OS but it works.
i run ubuntu (winspire distro on my PC running XP, just select the dual boot option, and you can run ubuntu in a window… or vice versa, but you may need VMware which is a virtual machine running inside a window.
You can Tri-Boot. This would allow you to choose which system you want to run, but switching would require shutdown and reboot. If you need to you can use Wubi in each Window version and run Linux from inside of Windows. If you don’t like it, you delete the folder or directory it creates and delete the item that references to it. I believe this is only for Ubuntu, but there may be other distributions that would provide this kind of install.
And yes if you create partitions for it, it can be installed directly to the hard drive. The Grub Boot Loader will bring up a menu screen at boot and you would have the option to choose which system you want to run. Open Source Distributions may be downloaded for free, requires you to burn the image to a CD or a DVD, depending on the size of the image. You boot the computer with the disk. Most will allow you to run in in memory so you can check it out before you decide to install it.