Two Operating Systems. One Thumbdrive.

[MrHacks]

One of the few things left I have planned on doing this weekend is installing two operating systems on a single thumbdrive.  It sounds impossible, but if you could only afford one thumbdrive why not make it a challenge and install two operating systems onto it?

This is actually feasable.  I mean, if I can install Cyanogenmod (Android) onto of WebOS with my HP Touchpad, why not Windows 8 Consumer Preview on top of Ubuntu 11.10?  (I know, I should probably wait for 12.04 LTE, but I'd much rather do this to impress some folks.)

So I picked up a 16 GB PNY Attache thumbdrive at K-mart for like $30, I think.  I was fortuante to nab the W8CP ISO (2.5 GB!) before Ma Bell pulled the plug.  So far, I haven't gotten any flack from Verizon for using torrents to get the Ubuntu 11.10 ISO or the Linux Mint 12 ISO.  I'd much rather let Mint be the Linux distro because Ubuntu feels as if they've set things up for everything else to be downloaded, and that is something I just can't do at the moment.

Torrents are great due to the fact that if you download through the browser and it gets cut off you have to start over.  The torrent will pick up from where it left off.  So yay piracy! (Just kidding.)

So as soon as Mint gets downloaded and I burn it to a DVD comes the fun part of installing all this stuff onto a thumbdrive then showing it off later to some important people I plan to impress with it.  But it doesn't stop there.  There are a few things on the Windows side of things that I still want to install that I could use on the Linux side, but downloading them for a tutorial that I'm rewriting would be ideal.

So I'm devoting this thread to this process and suggestions to take advantage having the best of everything.  The phrase "Virtual Machine" was brought up. That sounds important. 

[MrHacks]

A lot of kinks in my plans. Most of them have to do with a lack of home internet. (Mint didn't have the hardware drivers for WiFi installed. I might try the Live Ubuntu disc tomorrow.) And Windows 8 turns out to be a desperate mess. (Think a really large version of Window Mobile.) It also wouldn't acknowledge there was a thumbdrive to store the operating system on, it wanted to install on the computer harddrive. (Like that is ever going to happen.)  So until I can get Internet service again, this project is a on hold, which is so lame.