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Pedantic much? Technically you don't boot more than one, but you know what the question meant, you don't have to be so pedantic...then again...this is a programming forum... 
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Hi
I use dual boat XP and window server 2003  and also two machines with remote access. Because on one machine we have Microsoft CRM and on an other one we have SQL Reporting Server and bla bla.
Why not Microsoft applications often conflict with each other ? 
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Guys was vista suppose to be a test program or what? I must admit that am impressed by half of its properties.
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We have boxes in data centers in different states.
I've got a slackware linux server running which we use for remote code compiling.
But on my personal development machine its Windows 2003 (most of us are using that)
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I used to be a huge believer in dual, triple and quadruple-booting...until virtualization came along. Nowadays multi-booting isn't worth the aggravation. I'm not going to stop whatever I'm doing, shut down and restart my system just to test my app's behavior under another OS (and then reverse the process to get back into my development environment). I've done way too much of that for years, and I'm not going back.
Nowadays, where virtualization is impractical, I'll just use another box. Multi-booting is just a huge interruption of my work flow.
I think a followup question would be, if you're not using virtualization already, why not?
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Not all hardware runs virtualized enviroments well. I have a P4 2.6 GHz HT with 2 GBs of RAM, and while the machine is quite well performing (considering it's ~3 years old), I found that multi-boot is the best option so far: VMs are incredibly slow here.
I have XP, Vista and Ubuntu on different partitions, but I use XP for daily use - the other two os are for testing purposes.
Of course it adds its share of overhead, when reinstalling one of the systems for example, but it's easy to get used to fixboot and grub
Luca
The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance. -- Wing Commander IV
En Það Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað, Er Nýr Dagur.
(But the best thing God has created, is a New Day.)
-- Sigur Ròs - Viðrar vel til loftárása
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Luca Leonardo Scorcia wrote: Not all hardware runs virtualized enviroments well.
...those would be the circumstances where I mentioned I'd use a separate physical machine. If I just need to do a quick test on, say, a plain Win2K box (which is something I'd never use otherwise) with no particular hardware requirement, a VM will serve my needs. I suppose it all depends on what it is you need to do while you've got those other OSes up and running.
I have a P4 2.6 GHz HT with 2 GBs of RAM, and while the machine is quite well performing (considering it's ~3 years old), I found that multi-boot is the best option so far: VMs are incredibly slow here.
I've run VMware and Virtual PC/Server on older hardware. Of course, yes, the virtual machines are slower than running natively, but whatever it is I need to test, I can still accomplish that faster than stopping my development environment, rebooting, doing my tests, rebooting again, and getting my development environment back in the state it was in. It would only get more painful to code/test/code/test if I had to reboot every single time. I'd rather put up with slower guest OSes.
If the host OS is starved for RAM, I can just suspend the VMs until I need them again--it's still faster to resume a VM than completely rebooting the physical machine. If that becomes too much of a pain, then I'll throw more RAM at the host; it'll pay for itself in no time.
Bottom line, my productivity as a developer can't be optimal if I spend half my time waiting for a machine to reboot. I've done it for so many years, I couldn't justify going down that route ever again.
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I am a big fan of virtualization, but sometimes it just does not work. At my previous job, gdb would sometimes completelly freeze the VM. Eventually, I got a separate machine for Linux.
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I'm completely with you. I wasn't claiming virtualization was the answer to everything. I'll get another machine long before I ever contemplate a multi-boot setup, however. I've gone through enough upgrades at this point that I've build more machines than I currently need.
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I agree to an extent. It's hard to justify buying a new box for testing games or other hardware intensive apps for different OS's with the same hardware spec though. Say a game or other app needs to tested to run on a specific hardware set for 3 different OS's. It's impractical for any company or individual (that is not generating some immediate revenue) to say that it's more cost-efficient to save 3 minutes time lost from a reboot to reproduce a 2000$ gaming rig. In fact, it would be more practical in some cases, to have two versions of the same OS installed on one machine(each with a different vid card and driver set that it has been configured for) as long as you have relatively quick access to the guts of it), but that's all relative to your number of employess/salaries/budget. That said, i do most(if not all) of my managed development on a xp virt. machine in VPC 2007, but if I need some real hardware access and performance I'll reboot, although I do have more than one pc on a kvm if i really need to do something important in the 1-3 minute timeframe that it takes to reboot.
DrewG, MCSD .Net
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for me virtualization is everything - I hate if I have to shut down my laptop.
btw, intel's new processors support virtualization - and on dell machines, by default virtualization support is off. have to turn it on from bios setup
-------------------
Therez No Place like ... 127.0.0.1
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These days i tend to use Kubuntu as my primary OS and I have a VM that runs XP perfectly well inside it. Unfortunately some GFX card features that are used by the latest game engines haven't been ported to Cedega yet so if I want to play DirectX games with all the features working I have to reboot in an XP partition, I guess i should be glad that none of the games I play requires directx10 yet. This setup does have a great advantage that while I'm working at home I don't skive off for 10 mins playing computer games.
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1 Debian 4 (The best choice so far)
1 win xp (for my vb.net appz)
1 win 2003 server (for asp.net development)
1 ubuntu (to run them all in a vm
If i could run asp.net and win apps in debian out of the box , i would be the happiest man in the world!
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I still find that having separate boxes with different OS's is the best option. Currently 3-Vista, XP, and some web server flavor.
Marc
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But that would be rather costly investment of real estate, time, effort of management, energy to run around to over see the systems and cost of software right?
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them. --Leonard Louis Levinson
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Vasudevan Deepak K wrote: But that would be rather costly investment of real estate, time, effort of management, energy to run around to over see the systems and cost of software right?
Client provides most of the machines, one's a laptop, I typically only use one at a time anyways so the others are off, the 3 LCD monitors run off solar, I have a large desk, and the cost of software is nil because of my MSDN subscription.
Contrast that with the cost, in time, of setting up a VM and the time consumed because of lower performance. The benefit of a VM is that it can be restored to a known state, which is good for testing, not, as I interpreted the question to imply, for development.
Marc
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I'm like that, only I do keep a library of ready installed VMs. They make EXCELLENT demo utilities. You have something pre-recorded, install what you need and ship to the client. But I agree, nothing beats having a dedicated box.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook
"There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance." Ali ibn Abi Talib
"Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?"
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Yar.
One for Windows XP, one for OpenVMS.
But if my employer wanted to get me an Itanium system I might be able to run both on it. (Nah, I prefer the Alpha.) 
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I voted that I am using 1 operating system at work. Because Vista does not count as an *operating system*.
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - Cicero
.·´¯`·->Rajesh<-·´¯`·.
Codeproject.com: Visual C++ MVP
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I half disagree on the Vista thing.
It is a system. A huge bloaty system.
However, I do agree that it's not operating.
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." - Edsger Dijkstra
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Look. The half-assed one voting creatures are out. You can't say your opinion loudly. If you do, they'll vote you 1. However, there are only 2 or 3 of them. 
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - Cicero
.·´¯`·->Rajesh<-·´¯`·.
Codeproject.com: Visual C++ MVP
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Why do you care what people will vote?
Are you giving your opinion . . . or theirs?
Same concept for trolls: ignore them. Then they'll go away.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"How do you find out if you're unwanted if everyone you try to ask tells you to go away?" - Balboos HaGadol
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Rajesh R Subramanian wrote: Because Vista does not count as an *operating system*.
I guess I am the only one here who likes Vista Just love this "Start Search" box.
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Yes, Vista is worth buying for its "Start Search" box. This wonderful little search option outweighs all the other nuisances of this shiny unfinished bloatware operating system. It boots fast on my dual core machine with 4gb of physical memory. Amazing, isn't it? 
And finally, does it really matter if I like Vista or not? I am asked at gun-point to build software that would run on Vista. Because I am a developer, and I need to secure my job.
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - Cicero
.·´¯`·->Rajesh<-·´¯`·.
Codeproject.com: Visual C++ MVP
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Rajesh R Subramanian wrote: "Start Search" box
Seconded & thirded
Rajesh R Subramanian wrote: bloatware operating
Come on, with the price of hard drives now-adays does it really matter, I mean even here in the UK you can pick up 500GB sub £40. Plus the added bloat is for me worth the price for the speed with which Vista installs.
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