dual operating systems - is it possible?

alright, an idea just struck me. i have 2 mice, 2 headphones, and 2 monitors all plugged into the same comptuer. my cpu is dual core too. is it possible to have 2 operating systems running AT THE SAME TIME? like each monitor having a dif OS? idk how to do it neither do i have a clue if it's possible or not but can some1 shed some light?

well, your using one PC. so no it is not possible. how are you going to boot up 2 different operating systems at the same time :xx:. BUT. how ever it is also possible at the same time. have you heard of VMWare. VMware is tricky to get to know, i have no experience with it. but i know few people who have successfully used it. but you can run anything on Windows. By using the Virtual Machine Ware you can run your Windows OS, and you can run another Windows, Linux, MAC OSX… anything, and you can use it to test your own work.. really great tool, you can torrent the VMWare Client.

I'm kind of curious about this as well; I have dual-core athlon 3.0ghz with dual display, two keyboards, a mouse, and a usb tablet. How would one go about booting up simultaneous OSs? It would be awesome to run Win and Lin at the same time, so I don't have to reboot just to use Photoshop (the only thing I still need windows for XD, having solved teh iTunes issue with Banshee)

ThorsDecree wrote: How would one go about booting up simultaneous OSs? It would be awesome to run Win and Lin at the same time, so I don't have to reboot just to use Photoshop (the only thing I still need windows for XD, having solved teh iTunes issue with Banshee)

So, run Linux as your main OS and run Windows inside a virtual machine using VirtualBox. Linux as the host OS, running Windows as the virtual OS, tends to have similar performance to Windows on a native machine, anyways.

You could also dual boot, have both installed on the same computer. switching would require a restart, however, and you cant use both at the same time.

VM ware =]

its easy to get a VM reader and just run any Linux ISO through it =]

yes technically, you could run one in a VM in a seperate X server, bind soley to the other kb and mouse, which would keep them seperate.

But i'd suggest just binding it all ina xinerama screen.

Hit me up on msn if oyu need this explaining

Would it not be a lot easier just to buy a very cheap desktop to run one os (linux) on and run the other on your dualcore (xp-vista).

You can Dual-Boot but it requires restarting to change os and can lead to havoc in the system files if you don't do it properly.

I'm with the guys above - if u must run 2 os at the same time, run linux and use virtualbox to run windows from that.

i was reading something a while back about using one computer as two (or more, i think they mentioned up to 10)

pretty sure it was just running several 'thin' linux clients

here is a link to an article about it i just found on google: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/247676/Canadian_Software_Lets_You_Turn_One_Computer_Into_Two_Completely_Free

Plus its free software ;)

can probably also just get linux working with two separate x-servers each accepting input from one keyboard and mouse each. But I think I heard something a while ago about this been problematic with two mice inputs. Then you could easily hook up one of the x-servers to automatically load vmware to start a virtual os on login, something similar to this guide: http://www.watchingthenet.com/how-to-automatically-start-vmware-tools-in-ubuntu-and-kubuntu.html

hope this helped and didnt confuse too much.