A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on How To Run Multiple X Sessions Without Virtualization, which demonstrated how you can run multiple desktop environments at the same time on the same computer, and switch between them at the push of a button. I admit, this was somewhat of a warmup for the real show – how to run multiple Linux distributions at the same time without having to deal with the drawbacks of virtualization software.

Today, we’re going to be using chroot to treat certain parts of your Linux filesystem as (almost) completely isolated systems. This can let you do all kinds of interesting things, like run a full Gentoo system from inside your Ubuntu system with little to no performance loss.

Every modern operating system has some sort of startup routine. Even DOS had the old AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. The startup system defines what is launched on system startup, under what conditions, and in what order. DOS did things the simple way, having a file that was read on every boot that would run commands in whatever order they’re placed in the file. It is indeed simple, but like much of DOS, not nearly powerful or flexible enough to cut it these days.

What do you get when you put a stable operating system, an innovative desktop manager and plenty of eye candies together? You get nothing short of a beautiful and functional OS.

Elive is a Debian-based Linux distro, customized with Enlightenment e17 desktop manager. It is designed with the aim of providing a stable, fully functional and beautiful operating system that can run with minimal hardware requirement.

The current stable version is based on Debian-etch while the version that is under development is based on the recently released Lenny. Knowing the stability and versatility of Debian and the elegant and simplicity of Enlightenment, there are little things that Elive can go wrong.

Almost two years after Etch, Debian is putting the much-anticipated Lenny release on the proverbial shelves.  There are some pretty nice new features in this release. In this article, we’re going to cover installation, basic setup, disk encryption, and try out some of Lenny’s new moves.