With all the hype surrounding Linux these days, it's easy to become curious about it. Why is it billed as the magical solution to all your Windows problems? Why does every computer geek go on and on about it? And finally, what do you do to satisfy your curiosity? You try it out of course!
Why would you want Linux?
Call it hype, freedom of speech, the winds of change to open source, whatever it may be, Linux is a genuine threat to Microsoft as an operating system of choice for the masses. But so many people either don't know of its capabilities or are too fearful of making a change from what they currently have with Windows. Whether you want to run Linux alone, duelboot, virtualize or check out the alternative to Windows without installing, here we aim to not so much dispel myths, as discuss you options for running Linux and/or Windows.
Note: If you want to know more about Linux, our very own Linux Channel has a lot of content to satisfy your hunger for information. This article will solely focus on getting Linux running on your Windows computer.
Dualboot? Single-boot? Virtualization? Which one's for me?
You've surely heard words like these being thrown around when any Linux discussion is taking place? Well, they're just different ways of experiencing Linux on your computer. Let me describe them for you.
Dualboot: In such an environment, two operating systems (generally, Windows and Linux) are installed side-by-side on the same computer. It can be on the same hard-disk but on different partitions or on different hard-disks altogether. A completely different but relevant example would be WUBI which treats a single file inside a Windows partition as a separate disk and runs Linux through it. I'll get to that a little later.
Singleboot: In this environment, you've just installed a single operating system on your computer, which could be Linux, Windows or any other OS.
Virtualization: Virtualization is a term used when you're running one operating system inside another. There are special applications available which will create a separate environment inside your current OS (host) which mimics a real computer. You can then install/run another OS (guest) inside this program, without the guest ever coming to know that it's running inside a virtual machine.
Which distro?
Selecting which distro you should use is a bit like choosing a color for your car. There's no right or wrong answer, only a right answer for YOU! And with the huge number of distributions available these days, it can get quite confusing. A site I've personally found very useful when recommending a Linux distro is the Linux Distribution Chooser. They ask you a bunch of questions about yourself and your needs and proceed to recommend you a list of distributions which would be suitable. I went ahead and took the test and got Gentoo as my answer. Incredibly accurate and useful since that's the distro I use everyday on my laptop.
Or you can go to distrowatch.com and look around at the huge list of distributions available and choose one from the list.
Once you've chosen a distro, you will have to go to their specific site and download the CD image which they have made available. It could be a live-cd (more on that here), or an installer cd. After getting the .iso image, it's time to burn it to a CD/DVD. Fire-up your favorite CD/DVD burner application and use that, or try something like ImgBurn which is free and specifically made for this purpose. Once you've burn't the image, it's time to boot into Linux!
