partition question

[jake]

a mate told me that he runs two operating systems on his pc. one for internet browsing which has a web browser download manager and couple of other utilities and a second operating system for graphics and 3d packages and any other goodies and dodgy stuff which he did not pay for  

is this a safe way of providing some security on a pc?

and if it is which would be the best operating systems to use for this bearing in mind photoshop, 3dstudiomax,illustrator etc..

[jtpenrod]

It could be. In your mate's case, if he really does have a bunch of "dodgy stuff", then it's definitely a good idea to keep it in a seperate partition and off the 'Net to keep it from "phoning home" and ratting him out. In my partitcular case, I have multiple op-sys's installed, including Win 95. I seldom ever connect from Win 95 as I'm not willing to fork over the $70.00 or so for NIS, or the anual subscription fees to keep the anti-virus updates coming. For going on-line, I use Mandrake which is also the main OS. I use GRUB in Mandrake for loading the other OSs: Win 95, Red Hat, and QNX (and the new SuSE once it's out next month). Since Linux is inherently more secure than Winders, it's more secure to connect from it, even when downloading Win apps. You can always copy them into Win files (if you use VFAT, but not NTFS).
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[jake]

thanks for your help, i will look in to mandrake, i have heard a lot of good reviews on it and u have reinforced my decision to try it out!

thanks again