right, I have a fairly new computer (I7, 3GB ram, 500GB hdd) with win7 on it

I would like to try linux on here (or any other type of OS) as I am hoping to go to university to do computer networking and I will need to get to grips with different OS's

the last time I tried linux (fedora iirc, came with a fedora mag thing) and i installed it onto my laptop, it said it would dual boot, instead it deleted windows!

so..could you kind people please tell me which other OS's I should install onto my computer, ease of use and drivers etc, and how to install/dual boot

also, would it be possible to put the mac OS onto my machine, or do they have to have the exact same hardware as apples do?

thanks for any help you can give me

You want to try Ubuntu or openSUSE if you want something a little more advanced.

The former will set up a nice dual boot system automatically during setup, the latter will require you to do it yourself (easily done).

Linux Mint is stupidly easy to set up http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php the standard Gnome edition is best.
Mint is the pragmatic choice because it installs all the codecs, all the drivers, and all the other good stuff that other distros leave out for patent reasons.

If you return to Fedora then you will get KVM virtualisation with Virtmanager (these are Redhat tech, so Fedora stays ahead of the rest for this), which should be good for your course work. You can still have all the good stuff that's in Mint, you just have to spend a bit more time getting it.

But you could easily pick any from Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS. They should all work for you, they will all happily dual boot, and you can try them all on live CD without having to install if you don't like what you see.

Mac OS is going to be a bit a more difficult, and a lot less legal.

I'd try out the live CDs for a couple first, and think about running a virtual machine rather than dual-booting.

You can download the VMware player and ready-made VM images free and legal, and then just open it like you would an application. They run either in a window or full-screen, so you can have Linux and Windows at the same time. Here's one example:

http://vmplanet.net/node/114

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

Duel booting needs to be done at least once, but after that I would say that VMs are the way to go.

VM all the way for testing new OS's.

It is possible to install OSX on a VM or standard PC hardware but that's against the EULA so we can't discuss th OS86 project here

Sorry to take so long - been busy.

1. Try this Linux Distro Chooser. It will give an idea of the distros you're looking at using.
2. Different distros have different focusses e.g.:
   
   
   • Mint - Media-oriented distro for beginners
   • Ubuntu - Enthusiast-oriented distro for beginner to novice users
   • openSUSE - Office / Workplace distro for novice to intermediate users
   
   
3. All of the above have Live CDs you can try. These run directly from the CD/DVD and touch your hard disks at all.
4. To start with, be pessimistic about your skill level - you can always change distros later if you want something a little more advanced
5. Don't worry too much about which distro runs which programs. The most important things to consider are:
   
   
   • Does it run all my hardware? Some hardware doesn't seem to run properly for some reason in certain distros - YMMV.
   • Do I get on with the settings, control features, menus etc.? I prefer SUSE's YaST system to Ubuntu's Control Center; some think I'm crazy
   • Do I get on with the interface / desktop environment? I much prefer KDE to GNOME but again YMMV.
   • Do I get on with the support sites, forums, wikis etc.?
   
   
6. Many distros don't install closed source programs (Flash, drivers, codecs) for legal reasons. However these are dead easy to get later once you install. Don't worry about it.

Above all though, remember that Linux is all about choice - choose the solution that is best for you. There is no one solution that is correct for everybody.

Pistols at dawn?

OK, seriously... why does he need to dual boot? What's wrong with virtual machines?

For the experience...Nothing says BACKUP MORE! like a fubar'd MBR after deleting Linux
Dual booting is a learning experience.

probably a noob question, but if I bought another hard drive and installed linux onto that, would I still be able to dual boot, and also see what is on that hard drive on the other OS?

It depends on the format of the second HDD.

Assuming you have a HDD with your current OS on it (let's call it A), and you were buying a 2nd HDD (B).

I would:

Set B to be the boot disk.
Install Linux & GRUB onto that.
In the installer format B so it has Linux on one partition, a swap partition, and a FAT32 storage partition for stuff that you want access to from A.

Yes. That's what I did, it's very easy. It installs GRUB (lets you select which OS to boot into, but ALWAYS selects Linux as the default OS.)

But.

If you later decide that you'd rather remove Linux from the second drive and use it for backup etc, beware!

The GRUB bootloader is written over the initial boot sector. It searches for the OS's you have installed (according to its config file) and presents the options as a list. If you remove the Linux partition it crashes and hangs. You cannot get into any OS and are then entering a world of suffering.

I have done this twice (Ubuntu and Debian), both times I had to wipe both hard drives and start from scratch with Windows


I recommend a VM as the way forward. You don't have to select the OS at boot-up every time and you can switch between the two easily.

Much better

You should be able to use the Windows DVD to restore the MBR. The worst that can happen is that you delete your partition table, if you do, try the ultimate boot cd, which is actually good for a fair few things...

I wouldn't bother making Linux and Windows use different hard drives. If you have or need a second HDD in, format it to NTFS and let Windows and linux both live on the first, they can both happily read and write to the second. This is incredibly easy to do, and I have never had to wipe a hard drive because of it.

I dick around with various flavours of linux in virtual machines, but my preference is to install it properly if I am going to be using it a lot.

+1, restoring the MBR using the Windows DVD is easy. You can also configure GRUB to make Windows boot by default. 5 seconds with Google will show you how.