Running Linux Tonight

Here I am, surfing away in IceWeasel, running in Linux's KDE desktop environment. I have installed no new operating system on the computer, however.

It used to be that running an operating system meant committing all your computer hardware to that operating system. Once you spent those hours installing Windows, OS/2, or Linux, that was that... this was now what your computer ran.But there are a number of ways, now, to get the benefit of more than one operating system.

The way I'm doing it is Knoppix. If KDE is not your flavour, then there is Gnoppix. These are CD images that, when plopped in your CD drive, boot an entire working installation of Linux without touching your hard drive.

You can also install operating systems into "virtual machines." On one computer, I have Windows 2000 Server running inside Vista, using Microsoft's Virtual PC. There are a number of VMWare images of operating systems, that can be installed virtually. And there's also Qemu.

At least with operating systems, you can now have your cake and eat it too!