Multiple OS's on one box

[bwatson283]

I have XP 32bit, XP 64bit, Vista Ultimate, Server 2008 1 year trial, and Server 2003 enterprise (full, non trial)

My question is which one should I use as the host, then should I use MS VPC for the rest? Or should I dual boot some and virtual the rest.

I was using XP64 as the main from the dual boot, but i started having some issues with some apps/drivers. So i just made the XP32 the main but still kept the dual boot.
I have 1.25TB of storage, and 4gb of ram, 2.6ghz AMD Dual Core.

Could I use Linux as the Host and have all drives as NTFS? What VPC could I use to boot to all of those. I am still a uber linux noob. If so, what distro?

I do a lot of gaming, I have a 250gb drive of games that is almost full. I am a network admin so i will do testing for work on the multiple os's

I am leaning to the MS host and have multiple VM's, but 64 or 32?

 

[jaqie]

virtualbox is a freeware windows/linux "host os" virtual machine software. You may want to check that out, it sounds like you definitely could use it.

 

[bwatson283]

The OS that I will be doing the gaming in, should I make that the Host OS? So I do not have to boot to virtual to run games? If I do do games in Virtual, should I put that virtual HD on its own HD or just install it from virtual and point the installer to installer on a specific Gaming drive?

Edit: As you can tell I care about my gaming!

 

[jaqie]

for realtime applications (like games) you must run them native to get any real performance, and to get 3D acceleration. Make your host OS your best, most efficient gaming OS. If there was a good 64 bit version of windows 2000 I would recommend that, but as it stands the issue is somewhat muddy. VMWare's virtual machine software can run 64 bit guest OSes even when on a 32 bit host OS as long as the hardware it is running on is 64 bit native, so if you go with VMware the issue is simplified quite a bit (though setting up a vm with the freeware tools from vmware isn't the funnest thing in the world).

As it stands, I personally run XP SP2 32 bit with VMware's pay for version (which is much easier to build new VMs in then their free version). XP SP2 32 bit is a nice efficient current gaming OS.