Three Linux Operating Systems in One Computer (Is it possible?)

[Felipe Alfaro Solana]

> Hard Disk 1 19.42GiB IDE
>  /dev/hda1    Extended-3        /                 6.11GiB     Primary   Boot
>  /dev/hda7    Memory swap                      1.10GiB     Logical
>  /dev/hda6    Extended-3       /edubuntu     6.11GiB     Logical
>  /dev/hda5    Extended-3       /redhat         6.11GiB     Logical
>
> Hard Disk 2 76.69GiB SATA
>  /dev/sda1    Windows NTFS    /media/sda1    14.75GiB    Primary    Boot
>  /dev/sda5    Windows NTFS    /media/sda5    16.70GiB    Logical
>  /dev/sda6    Windows NTFS    /media/sda6    16.70GiB    Logical
>  /dev/sda7    Windows NTFS    /media/sda7    16.70GiB    Logical
>  /dev/sda8    Windows NTFS    /media/sda8    11.84GiB    Logical

Wht don't you use LVM (Logical Volume Manager) instead of some many
partitions? The advantages of LVM are the following:

- You can easily resize a logical volume. However, resizing a
partition is not as easy.
- You can implement N logical volumes using a single partition.
However, you need N partitions to implement N volumes.
- There is a maximum limit on the number of partitions. However,
although there are theoretical limits on the number of logical
volumes, in the practice rarely you max them out.


> 4. Is it enough only a one swap partition for all Linux operating systems?
> (shared swap) or may I have to break the swap into two partitions?

You can do fine with a single swap partition.

> 5. If the swap is not fully deactivated when shutting down one Linux
> operating system (say due to a power failure), would it it affect any second

This shouldn't case any problems, as far as the swap signature is
retained (AFAIK the swap signature can be removed when using
suspend-to-disk) there shouldn't be any problem. And, in case of
problems, you swap partition won't be activated. Later, you can use
mkswap to re-create the signature on it and use swapon to activate it
manually.