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On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 10:43 PM, Rob Beard <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 14/06/10 22:07, Roland Tarver wrote: > >> Thanks for the advice. My plan sounds like an un-necessary hassle, >> lol! I will do as you do and get an old computer for the task. Just >> need to get through all the uni work and then I _really_ want to give >> Debian a spin...... >> >> Thank you :-) >> Roly >> > > If you've got a reasonable spec machine (Pentium 4, Athlon 64 or higher) and > a reasonable amount of memory (1GB or higher, 2GB upwards preferably) then > you might want to give something like Virtualbox a try. There is either an > open source version (virtualbox-ose in the Ubuntu repositories) or a > Personal Use (i.e. for personal users) version available (the Personal Use > version supports plugging in USB devices and a couple of other features). > > With VirtualBox you can run different distros in their own virtual PC > without having to have a spare machine handy or dual boot. The virtual PC's > hard drive is stored as a file on the hard drive and the memory is shared > with the main PC memory (basically you allocate an amount of memory to the > virtual PC, say 512MB and also some memory to the virtual video card). Then > choose to boot from an ISO image, Floppy image, network or physical media > (could be floppy drive or CD drive). > > As far as the OS in the virtual machine is concerned, it's running on a > standard PC. Speedwise it isn't bad, it helps if you have a quicker PC with > the virtualisation extensions in the processor (most newish AMD desktop > processors have this, not sure about notebook CPUs, some Intel CPUs have it > and some don't) but even on an older P4 machine with 1GB ram it should run > reasonably well (I have about 3 servers virtualized on my P4 3Ghz server > with 2GB Ram). > > Rob Hi Rob :-) That also sounds a good way of trying distro's out. Again...a conversation for another occasion. Perhaps I can have a chat to you and Gordon at a meeting in the near future. I do think user data on a separate partition sounds sensible though? If nothing else for backup purposes and assuming the pitfalls Simon mentions are not too bad. We shall see... My laptop (my main machine) should be up to the job I think? Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8400 @ 2.26GHz; with 4GB of RAM, although I am running 32-bit Ubuntu so I guess only 3GB is addressed? Many thanks Best wishes Roly :-) -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html