Windows and Linux

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Feb 3, 2012
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Hey, what's up everyone.

I was curious if I could run two OS's at the same time. As in running one OS on one hard drive(W7) and then running another OS (Ubuntu 11.10 server) on the second hard drive. Wanting to use them side by side, nothing virtually. Can a computer split up the resources for that?

If it cannot do that, I'm then wanting to know what performance difference there is between actually running Ubuntu and running it virtually on W7?

If there really is no performance difference, then would running a server that way work well? With the server I'm wanting to stream media off it, to about four or so other friends. I would be using it with subsonic. I know I can run subsonic on windows, but the only reason why I want windows running is because I play games like BF3. I would prefer using Ubuntu all the time though, and windows just for games.

Dual boot would not work for this because I don't want my server going offline. I do have my old parts that I was building this whole server for, but running a server 24/7 also on older parts(well from 2007), makes the electricity bill a little bit higher lol. Though I did go to the Ubuntu forums and asked if I could run the server on my Main Rig, and then when I want to play games, turn my server rig on and have that run the server while I use W7 for gaming. I'm talking about doing this with the OS's on two different HDD's in one case. The guy who responded told me how to do it with high performance (streaming it to friends and what not). But I just want to know what I'd need to do to just hook something up like that.

I hope I posted this in the right spot, wasn't too sure where to put this lol.
 
I think virtualization would be the way to go, but I am not that advanced in it. I do know the performance hit of running any Linux in say VMWare Player is minimal. I do not know about the performance hit you would encounter while playing a game and running the VM in the background. You can certainly locate the VM on the second disk which should help there.

The part to figure out would be how others access the server running in a VM. I am sure there would be a network performance hit were you to be web surfing or playing an online game at the same time.

As far as using a second system, you really do not need a monster. I have heard of people using dual core Intel ATOM rigs for such a thing. Assuming a big enough hard drive, a dual core ATOM netbook should even work. Assuming you have all the other parts, all you would need to buy for such a system would be a MB/CPU like this. Note that it does use laptop ram. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121442
 
Yeah I have actually looked that up a little bit. I found a tutorial on how you can do that, have not read any of it yet though.
Yeah the networking speed is my biggest concern, but if anything I want it for personal use. Would controlling a computer remotely to listen to music and watch movies? or would that media still be considered streaming?

oh I know thats why I used my old parts from my first gaming rig I built.
my old parts put into a server:
AMD athlon 64 X2 5600+
2GB DDR2 800 Corsair
PSU
MOBO
Then a 2TB HD I bought back in November. But I would prefer not to run a second machine, just trying to keep the electric bill down.

Specs of my main machine I want to run the Dual/virtually OS's on:
Asus X58 sabertooth
Corsair 6GB trip chan 1333
Corsair 750w
WD 500GB (and the 2TB ^^)
HD 4870 1GB DDR5
i7-950

I will be buying a new HD 5450 for video watching puposes. (i have 2 monitors 1 HDTV)

also considering a new ssd 120gb.
 
Since you were considering the power usage implications, which system would use the most power if left on? You could always turn the gaming rig off when not in use.

The Atom thing I was talking about uses maybe 27 watts or so fully loaded. You can also buy one already made from several sources for about $250-300. Just look for ATOM server.