[sf-lug] recommended Linux distributions to install on dual or tri boot

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Frantisek Apfelbeck (algoldor at yahoo.com):

> Till now I was using Linux distro on one partition, another partition
> for user and other for data (which was NTFS or FAT32 so usable also
> under Windows). I created also partition for Windows but never really
> use it, went the way of Virtual Machine from Oracle instead. 

In general, running your main OS natively and other OSes in virtual
machines ends up being a great deal more useful than dual-booting
/ multibooting.  As you observe dual-booters over time, you see them
staying 90%+ of the time in the more-familiar OS because it's such a
disruption to shut everything down and switch to the other OS.  So, the
users strongly tend to fail to enjoy the theoretical advantages of
multiple OSes being available.

At the cost of some RAM and a bit of CPU, VM technology (e.g.,
VirtualBox) fixes that problem.  You can actually, truly use both OSes
concurrently.  You also get to keep the relatively simple partitioning
and boot configuration you started with.

Naturally, there are edge cases where running non-default OSese as a VM
guest isn't feasible for performance or other reasons.  Those are rare.

Separate hard drives are an alternative if your hardware supports quick
plug-out/plug-in of drives, e.g., on 'carriers' you buy for that
purpose.  Depends on your computer hardware.  (Or, I suppose, you could 
continually change the designated boot drive in one's BIOS between two 
non-removable hard drives, or something like that.)

> I definitely want to improve my backing up habits

Remember, the slightly lame, partially thought-through backup scheme
you actually implement always outpoints the really good one you're not
quite done working out.  Go with whatever scheme you have today, and
improve it at your leisure.

'Backup Scheme' on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Admin shows the directory
trees I snapshot to a removable disk drive on my server system.  (Many
of those trees such as the Exim and Mailman ones are server-specific.)

'Copying Directory Trees' on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Admin talks about
ways to copy directory trees.  'rsync -ax olddirectory/ newdirectory/'
is a good basic (local-copying) recipe that can be used for most things.