Most physical machines ship with a single operating system, 2
like you know, Windows 10 or Mac OS X, 3
but it’s possible to have multiple systems 4
on the same physical machine, 5
even with a single hard drive. 6
And you can choose to do this 7
so that you can have different security domains. 8
One OS X could be for general use 9
and the other could be locked down for security and privacy. 10
When you switch the machine on, 11
you’d be presented with the option for which OS you want to boot into. 12
And you know, here is an example here, 13
the sort of screen that you might get, 14
and here’s the sort of screen you might get in Windows. 15
And dual boot is a viable option for different security domains, 16
but it lacks some flexibility 17
in that you can't access multiple operating systems at the same time 18
like you can with virtual machines and with some other options. 19
So one viable option could be to go with Windows as your standard boot, 20
and you secure that and you use that for everyday use, 21
and then you go with a Linux based operating system like Debian, 22
and you increase the security, lock it down more 23
and use it for more extreme privacy. 24
So with dual boot, you do get that separation, 25
you can get the privacy and security balance, 26
but because this is virtual, 27
depending on how you’re storing files on one operating system, 28
and on the other operating system, 29
they could be used to compromise each other. 30
There is no real isolation in the file system with dual boot. 31
They can have different file system types 32
and that can make it difficult to get access to your other files, 33
but it’s not an actual security mechanism. 34
So there is a potential vulnerability there with those dual boot environments, 35
as to whether or not you can get the files from one operating system 36
that should be accessed in the other operating system. 37
And if you want to do file sharing, 38
then you will find that you'll need a solution for that, 39
which would be a file system that they can both access, 40
or some sort of remote storage or external disk 41
or some sort of file system that they can both access, like I said. 42
How you set up dual boot 43
is very depending on the operating systems that you’re going to go with, 44
you’re going to need to figure out how to do that 45
based on the operating system that you’ve got, 46
and also on the machine that you’ve got. 47
So different machines will enable you to get into the bios in different ways. 48
There is a pretty good website that explains the various options, 49
and that’s here, 50
but if you Google dual boot 51
and the operating systems that you’re wanting to use, 52
then you'll find some information on how to set all that up. 53
So it’s an option that might interest you.