Please Explain All The OS Talk ! !

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Please Explain All The OS Talk ! ! I'm not a complete noob, But have used windows all my life. I don't understand anything you guys are saying! Say i wanted to keep my windows and wanted to multiboot a new OS or two, How would i even start? what programs to use to set up multiple OSes? and What new OSes? And whats the point of using an OS if you have to program yourself? I know alot to explain to a dummy but how did you learn?

With Ubuntu, there is a Live CD version which you can install from so you can try it out before messing about with installing etc.

Windows does not like multiboot with Linux, but Linux will adjust and support booting for Windows and other Linux distro's...

Although with Windows, you have to install the oldest first, and newest last otherwise it will not like it.

Fast powerful and easy? More like, a complete headache when you try to do some REAL work on it

There's another 'OS on a CD' called Knoppix, but so far it kno work... I'm still pluggin' at that...


A lot of us are computer geeks (either hobbyist or professionals), and you just wind up having to deal with a lot of different OS's over time (I started with Dos 2.1 back in the day, and Banyan vines...

For the most part, they all do the 'same thing', they just have different ways of going about it.

Ask questions; the only stupid question (IRL) is one that isn't asked.

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Just a few Options i found on linuxquestions.org And i have a few problems, Lost or can't find windows disk but genuine, So i want to keep ! ! I was going to install on a second hard drive but i don't know how much space any of these take up!(2nd HD 2 gigs!!) Also my dvd-rw is not recognizing my cd-rw so have to wait a few weeks to get a few cds! I lent my usb drive to my cousin cause he wanted to show me some of his favorite stuff. So I was just wondering, Is it possible to run a "LiveCD" through Daemon tools pro on vista ultimate 32? (By the way, I hate Vista But its genuine and plays my games! Also pretty)

Many years ago, dinosaurs and other fantastic beasts roamed the earth. It was an age undreamed of: the endless September had begun, people would job-hop every few months with no ill effects, and everyone partied like it was 1999 because it was, in fact, 1999.

Though I had used computers since the late 1980s, my first computer was a 486 running Windows 3.11 on top of DOS 6.x. It was a different world. I would edit .ini and .bat files in DOS to get my machine to run properly. (This was before plug-and-play.) I would use disassemblers and hex editors to look at the code for old DOS games and sometimes even crack them. (Let's be honest, I usually downloaded keygens and cracks off usenet.) I did not upgrade to Windows 95 until OSR2 came out, (the equivalent of SP1 or 2). By this point, I was fairly comfortable with using a command line in DOS and editing text files to change how the hardware and software operates. I followed up with Win 98 SE, then Win XP. Back in college, while still running Win 98, I ended up with two hard drives in my machine. So I installed Red Hat on one of them. Eventually I settled on using Mandrake as my distro of choice. For a good part of college (and afterwards), I used Mandrake full-time at home, even getting my then-wife to use it. Then I got XP and stopped using Linux for several years, finally returning to Ubuntu a few years ago.

How you should learn? No idea, I don't know you. Personally, I'd download virtualbox for windows and install different operating systems using it. No sense in messing with dual boot these days. Ubuntu is a very good beginning Linux distro. SUSE and Fedora are also popular choices. Maybe I'd then try FreeBSD. I'd also start looking at programming using a simple language like Python.

If I were to get back into programming, I'd look at Python and Scheme, then move on to Java, C, and C++. (My background is in Java and VBA, but that was years ago.)

These days, I'd just buy a Macbook if I wanted to mess with an alternative OS. Which I have done. I still have XP and Ubuntu running side-by-side on my main laptop. Each has its purpose.

I suppose the most important question is why do you want to play with them?

People misuse the term plug and play. I wonder how many people use the "Safely remove hardware" before unplugging? I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't. I do prefer the motherboards that weren't plug and play, I liked messing around with jumpers. Last nPnP device I had was a modem that could be set to PnP.

Best way to install another OS, backup everything. And begin.

I'm one of the wierdos who unmounts his USB memory sticks...

As for Knoppix, I haven't gotten that far yet. I'll try it this evening; I need to get the iso file to even go to the @#$%ing CD or DVD blank. Didn't work on the old system (locked up the program, but not the OS, thank heavens... I'll try it on the other machine.

The impression I got was that Knoppix didn't need to create partitions in order to run. If it does, I've got the mother of all backups to do... Well, we'll see...

thanks for the offer, I'll keep you in the rolodex...

There's a piece of gadgetry that Sun put out - open source, of course.

Digression: the main reason people get upset about M$ in particular and closed source in general is that some of us invented the stuff that M$ / Oracle / IBM / Sun have patents on now (ever ask yourself why you can't get a bluetooth device that doesn't flash like the eddystone light all the time? - patent conditions) long before they thought of it. And we've gotten used to the idea that the world works better if we share the source code. M$ is the 300lb gorilla in that ring, but their economic destiny is with the dinosaurs in the long run. IMHO

VirtualBox: Lets you install alternative operating systems and run them (almost) as though they were native installs. Without the rebooting between modes.

Nevermind ! ! Worked after i checked disk integrity ! ! Weird ! ! Wish me luck ! !