Even I was one of you. Now I’ve moved my personal laptop to Linux though I had a licensed copy of Windows Vista. That’s the power and craze of Linux. It’ll get you there once you try it out. Ok to try it out what can I do ? Simple, first there are two ways of doing it.

• First is to have a dual-boot option where you can have Linux and Windows running in a same machine. Try it out. Get your hands dirt. You’ll be able to feel the power and ease of using it soon. Eventually you will end up discarding one OS. I leave it to you to decide which one… J But this option requires some technical know-how about the installation, partition tables, file system… If you don’t know leave it, I’ve another option for you.
• The second option is quite simple and straight forward – Virtualization. I’ll talk about this in this post.

   

To Virtualize, there are many options available. I’ll give you an option that is easy and free to use. We’ll work with “VMware Player” which is free and easy. Now follow the steps

• Download it directly from here. It helps you to run any VMware appliances.
• Now we need to download VMware appliances for Linux. The options are many. You can yourself search for anything here. For Linux, there are numerous options available for various distributions and flavours. You can also download the Appliance from this site. I found it Googling.

Now you are ready to run Linux in your PC which runs Windows. Just install the VMware player. Extract the Contents of the archive file you have downloaded from the above links. Just launch the “.vmx” file available. It’ll be launched in VMware player by default. Wait for some time, allow it to launch the VMware. You’ll have the “Linux” running in your PC now. Most probably you’ll be provided with the user credentials along with the downloaded archive in a separate text file. Login and there you go… J

VMware Rocks…! Do share your comments…!