“Linux is hot. Very hot. And you, like most PC owners, probably
want to find out what all the fuss is about. Of course, you have no
intention of getting rid of Windows just yet. Windows runs all your
hardware, all your applications, and all your games. And the newest
stuff comes out for Windows first, so naturally you want to keep
it. That leaves you with two choices if you want to use Linux: You
can either buy a second computer or dual-boot Linux with
Windows.”
“Not too many months ago, you might have been better off with
the first choice, because dual booting took an enormous amount of
effort. Happily, things are easier today, with recent releases of
the various Linux distributions (Caldera, Corel, Mandrake, Red Hat,
Suse, and so on) offering tools for doing everything from
repartitioning your hard drive to finding the free space for
installing Linux alongside Windows. If you want to try Linux, buy
or download a recent distribution and set it up for dual booting so
you can choose either operating system when you start your
machine.”
“If your machine has sufficient resources, the best way to
add Linux (or another version of Windows, for that matter)
may be by using a product called VMWare. … Most of us,
however, don’t have the memory needed for VMWare. How then to set
up a dual-booting system? For the most part, the Linux distribution
will do it for you. As long as you have a partition on which
to install Linux, the installation routine will take over from
there.”