When I set up this Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop with OpenBSD 4.4 late last year, I decided to go with Firefox 2.0.0.16 instead of the newer Firefox 3.0.1.

When I installed OpenBSD on this system's 14.4 GB drive, I made the root partition a whole lot bigger than recommended. I recall a previous FreeBSD install that crapped out when I didn't have enough space, but I was too ambitious on what I was installing at that point. Still, I gave / a whole gigabyte. I'm not quite sure why I gave /usr so much space, but in the case of /, I wanted to make sure I had room to grow.

I ran my first Linux live CD in January 2007. I've been using free, open-source operating systems on my personal machines for much of my work for the past two years, more intensively in the last year.

Tip Number 4: Every tip in this article is important, but this is even more so. When attempting to dual-boot on a computer with one hard drive, do not install Linux or make the mistake of installing Linux on the same partition that Windows is installed on. That is the same thing as deleting your C drive. So look before you install.

This is the second article on dual-booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.10 on a computer with one hard disk. The first, how to dual-boot Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7, showed how to accomplish the task with GRUB 2, the boot loader used by Ubuntu, installed on the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the hard disk. That is, GRUB is responsible for the dual-booting task.

If you're a software enthusiast who has never used OpenBSD before, you might enjoy installing it by yourself and figuring it out as you go. If, however, you're looking for a more practical approach to using OpenBSD 4.1 on a desktop or server machine, here's a quick guide to get you started in this spectacular operating system.

How to dual-boot Fedora 14 and Windows 7 is next in a series of articles on dual-booting Windows and Linux distributions. The first was how to dual boot Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7. That article gave detailed instructions on how to dual-boot, with GRUB installed on the MBR of the hard disk.

OpenBSD provides a UNIX® distribution with a primary emphasis on security and cryptography. If you're looking for a UNIX distribution to deploy in the most critical nexus in your network infrastructure, look no further than OpenBSD. The recent release of OpenBSD—version 4.3—includes several new features and bug fixes that this article reviews.

The first two articles on dual-booting Windows 7 and Linux distributions published here involved installation on a computer with a single hard drive. Those articles on dual-booting Fedora 14 and Ubuntu 10.10 with Windows 7 are available here and here. This article will cover a different use-case, dual-booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.10 or Linux Mint 10 on a computer with two hard drives.