Re: 2 distros
If you're wanting to install a second distro, but you didn't plan ahead
for it, it's likely that doing the second installation would be
troublesome for you, because you would need some hard drive partitions
you hadn't planned for.
One option in this case is to use User Mode Linux. This is a version of
a linux installation in which the kernel runs as a user process within
your existing Suse (or whatever) installation. It uses a filesystem
heirarchy that lives within a single large regular file on your existing
installation.
This has several advantages. One is that if you don't like the
installation, or you mess it up somehow, you can back it out just by
deleting that file. It's also used for things like debugging the kernel
with user mode kernels, studying kernel operation, and trying out
unknown user applications and new kernel code in a sandbox where it
won't be able to attack your machine.
It's particularly useful for what you want to do, to evaluate a
different distribution.
The project home page should be:
http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/
But it's not responding for me right this sec. The project sourceforge
page is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/user-mode-linux/
which is responding. I see that they have readymade Debian and RedHat
distributions you can download, as well as just the kernel.
It probably takes more expertise with Linux to get user-mode Linux
configured properly on your machine than to just run an installer of a
CD to naked hardware, but what you would learn in doing this would
probably be pretty worthwhile.
It is possible to install many different distributions simultaneously on
a PC that you boot off for real (not running in a user process like the
above) but it requires that you either carefully plan your partitioning
ahead of time before you do your first installation, or that you use
extra disk drives.
If you use SCSI disks with either wide or LVD scsi, using a controller
such as the adaptec 29160, you can have up to 15 separate disk drives
(with some in external cases) and boot off of any of them. You can
either use the SCSI controller BIOS settings to select a boot drive, or
use a fancy boot loader like grub (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/ and
available as a debian package).
I do cross platform development and am always having to run some random
new OS, so I use SCSI drives as much as I can.
Best,
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/
crawford@goingware.com/
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
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