Dual Booting of PC and dual screen

Dual Booting of PC and dual screen

Hello Sandra,

I think you may have misunderstood the meaning of “Dual Boot”. By saying “dual boot” one means, having the capability of running 2 operating systems one at a time. You mentioned “dual-boot and dual-screen” on your post. Let’s discuss it further. Current dual or multi boot systems employ the use of Windows and Linux, Windows 7 and older versions, or Windows and Mac. 

On startup, the computer gives the user a choice of booting just a single operating system. It then proceeds to load the selected operating system, until the next boot where it asks the same thing and waits for the user to make his/her choice.

On Windows, the application called EasyBCD makes the task of giving the user a choice of what operating system to start on boot up. Linux uses either GRUB (Grand Unified Boot loader) or LILO (Linux Loader) to integrate other operating systems, by writing on to the disk’s master boot record (MBR). Mac OSX has Chameleon, to do the operating system selection using the same methods like the other two. 

So in no way can 2 operating systems run at the same time, using a single computer employing the boot selection methods described above. There are however, other ways to give you the 2 Operating Systems on 2 dual screen setup you want. One is by emulating.

Virtual emulators like VirtualBox and VMware give you the power to run multiple operating systems at the same time, provided you have enough resources like memory and processing power. All one has to do is run these applications, create a virtual disk, and install an operating system as if it were on another machine. The newly installed operating system could then be started. 

To achieve the dual screen setup, just extend the display from your main operating system to the second monitor setup, using your display settings, and dragging the 2nd operating system you just started to that extended desktop. Now your primary monitor is your master operating system running the virtual machine, and your secondary monitor holds your emulated virtual operating system.

A KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) device is another alternative for running dual or multiple setups using two or more operating systems. Several operating systems connect to a single keyboard, video, mouse setup. They are used on server setups, but only a single operating system can be used at a time with the use of a switch or a shortcut on the keyboard to monitor all of them. 

Now if you desire using two operating systems at the same time, then there is a technology called a “Thin Client” which has the capability of running 2 or more child computers running off a master machine running the same operating system, either windows or Linux.