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I'm beginning my experiment with Linux and other OS's.

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MilesAhead:
@superboyac they may have changed it a bit with a time-out in the new distros, but one trick I used to do was open a console and use the 'su' command to log in as admin.  Then just leave the window open if I was installing or configuring stuff.  When done I'd just exit the 'su' session.
Also the distros usually set up virtual terminals.  Often if an X session was hung you could still hotkey to a virtual terminal, log in as admin, then kill X and just restart it.  Once Linux kernels got to 2.x it was very rare to get a hardware lock that required cycling the power.

My feeling when multi-booting Windows and Linux was that they were the inverse of each other.  Windows was better for installing and using software right away.  Linux took longer to set stuff up, but it almost never broke once you did.  They've converged a bit since then.  It may be less frustrating doing Linux if you acclimate yourself to Linux/Unix style editors on Windows.  It's very distracting if you have to constantly figure out how to use the editor when you really just want to fix the configuration file or startup script.

40hz:
Some guys over at Boot Land have done the same thing using USB key drives and Windows boot manager. Boot from USB and the same boot manager menu comes up.  Very cool.
-MilesAhead (December 22, 2009, 01:49 PM)
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@MilesAhead - Nice find! Thanks for the link. :Thmbsup:

When trying to accommodate hardwire sometimes I would build several kernel versions.  All it took was a few lines in the boot manager configuration file to load the specific kernel, and particular modules depending on the kernel version in startup scripts.  Sometimes I would have to boot a kernel to use a device when an older kernel may be generally more stable or whatnot.  One of the things I really liked about Linux was the ability to boot a floppy that pointed you into the Linux partition on the HD.  If your boot manager got hosed you could boot the HD install from the floppy.
-MilesAhead (December 22, 2009, 01:49 PM)
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And it will only get easier with time. On the FOSS side we're all looking forward to the finalization of the Grub2 boot manager. Still a little too early in the dev cycle for general deployment - but the current version does work quite nicely. No real showstopper bugs so far.

Link: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-2.en.html

 :Thmbsup:

f0dder:
40hz: my gripe against multibooting isn't making it work (pretty easy, just install OSes in the right order ;)), but that it's so damn inconvenient having to do all the partitioning (and reserving space!) and, mostly, all the reboots. VMs are so much more convenient.

Sharing HOME between distros sounds a bit dangeorus... don't you risk .config files being clobbered?

40hz:
40hz: my gripe against multibooting isn't making it work (pretty easy, just install OSes in the right order ;)), but that it's so damn inconvenient having to do all the partitioning (and reserving space!) and, mostly, all the reboots. VMs are so much more convenient.-f0dder (December 23, 2009, 08:10 PM)
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Agree. But I've just seen too many weird things go down with Linux under VMs to be an enthusiastic endorser. My attitude is it's OK to use a VM if you have to - or have a compelling need, such as an ultra-secure platform for browsing, malware hunting, or for a security appliance. But it does introduce an additional layer, which can cause oddball problems and sap performance. I'm sure a lot of it comes from people not sufficiently understanding how to best configure and effectively use a VM. (I'm sure I'm one of them! ;D) But either way, it's a problem I've seen.

Interestingly enough, the most common complaint I hear from new adopters at various LUG meetings revolves around performance issues. Most of the people I know who end up completely walking away from Linux do so because they're not happy with performance. So performance is a very big issue for most users as far as I can tell.

Sharing HOME between distros sounds a bit dangeorus... don't you risk .config files being clobbered?

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I haven't run into any borked .config file issues so far (knock wood), although there *is* the issue of user/group file ownership and RW access to consider.

The trick is to make sure your account has the same unique UID and GID for all installations. You may need to use usermod and groupmod after a secondary install to change it to match your first. If you made a change, you will also have to chown -R from/to owner:group starting at root (/) to make sure you get full RW access to everything on the drive.

Hmm...now that I think about it, I guess it isn't really all that simple or intuitive is it? :redface:

OK, I'll concede using a common /home isn't something a first-time Linux adopter could (or should) be doing.  

Good catch! :Thmbsup:

zridling:
On the flip side, I have Win7 running in a VM and it works fine. Go figure!

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