So you think you need to reformat your whole computer, or repartition your drives to get linux? That's not true.
I'll be honest, I've been using linux for years. I don't dual boot, and, never have. I've been playing WoW on linux for a very long time, and have been running linux as my OS of choice on my desktop computer since 2002. The only real way to get linux to behave and perform exactly as it should, is to install it locally. LiveCDs are slow to load, and their performance isn't the best. But most people don't want to give up their windows for various reasons - fear, uncertainty, doubt, about what they can and can't do in Linux, as well as how to use it, which is all perfectly natural. But people are still curious about linux, which is also perfectly natural.
Lets face it- when the average person wants to try linux, they want to try it a little at a time. This means switching to a linux desktop, or trying out a linux application here and there, first. LiveCDs allow you to load a full linux desktop and application suite right from the CD, but having to reboot every time you want to play World of WarCraft can get annoying. Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to run Windows and Linux on your local PC at the same time?
Well, there is... Enter Cooperative Linux. coLinux (for short) runs the linux kernel as a win32 process on a Windows 2000 or XP (and maybe Vista, I'm not sure but I don't see why it wouldn't work). Running the linux kernel as a win32 app has its limitations, and performance hits, true, but it also means you don't need to reboot to go between linux and windows. It's just as simple as alt-tabbing.
The downfalls of coLinux are that it's VERY memory-hungry. Lets not forget you're running a whole OS inside another OS, so if you want decent performance, you'll need to have some RAM available. on a standard 512 meg system, Windows will get trimmed down to 256 while linux will also get 256 (You can adjust how much memory coLinux gets, but don't starve it). I'd recommend 512 minimum, preferably 768 or even a gig to make it happy. Another issue is that since you're running an OS this way, the graphics and sound support isn't fully there yet - you're taking an OS which usually addresses the hardware directly, funneling it through the windows APIs, and forcing it to use windows drivers to output to the video card and speakers - that's something linux doesn't do by itself, and so the coLinux folks had to write their own hardware abstraction layer to accomplish this - and it's a work in progress.
If you can stomach that, however, once coLinux is installed, you can use the X11 server for windows (comes with Cygwin) to run a rootless X11 system, and run linux apps natively under windows with no issues. You can even run the full Gnome or KDE UI inside windows via X11.
So for all of you who say "I can't", here's another option to consider.
Cooperative Linux can be found at
http://www.colinux.org and, remember - a native linux install is a lot better, but this is good for getting your feet wet...
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