Multi-booting is the process of installing and using multiple operating systems on one machine. Multi-booting has many uses, including:
- testing different operating systems,
- utilizing software that may not work as expected on another OS,
- deploying and testing software on different operating systems,
and more.
Multi-booting vs. virtual machines
While virtual machines and multi-booting can be used for the same purposes, each has their own distinctions. Virtual machines are installed inside a host operating system and can be run side-by-side as long as the host machine's resources are sufficient. Multi-booting does not allow running each operating system simultaneously. One trade-off for this is that multi-booting provides the booted OS with bare access to the machine's components, rather than needing to go through the same translation and compatibility layers as a virtual machine.
Common uses for multi-booting
Gaming
While gaming is relatively straight-forward and accessible on Linux, some games are still incompatible. One notorious cause of this, especially in online competitive multiplayer games, is kernel-level anti-cheat (such as Valorant's Vanguard anti-cheat). Many of the popular kernel-level anti-cheats do not work on Linux. Because of this, dual-booting Linux and Windows is a popular choice for those that play games with such kernel-level anti-cheats.