~Using software Emulators~
In a perfect world, all the tools available would work on the same operating system. But in the real world, that's not the case. Many great tools operate on operating systems that are incompatible with each other. Very few of us, of course, are conversant with multiple operating systems. Also, few have the money to support duplicate hardware and software.
Enter dual-boot or multi-boot workstations. You can use a product like PartitionMagic to set up partitions for the various operating systems. I used Mandrake for re-partitioning for what now seems too long, a random (codefoo) suggested i try Knoppix instead, I haven't used mandrake since.. After you set up your partitions, you install the operating systems on the various partitions.
When everything’s installed, you can select the operating system you want to use when you boot the system. Say you’re using NetStumbler on Windows XP and you decide to use WEPcrack (which is available only on Linux) on the access points you just identified with NetStumbler. You shut down Windows XP, reboot your system, and select the Red Hat Linux operating system. When you want to use Windows XP again, you must do the reverse. This isn’t a bad solution, but flipping back and forth a lot eats up valuable time. And managing your partitions and trying to make the operating systems coexist on the same hardware can be challenging.
Enter software emulators. Software emulators allow you to emulate a guest operating system by running it on top of a host operating system. You can run Linux emulation on a Windows host, and vice versa. To emulate Windows or DOS on a Linux host, you can choose one of the following Windows-based emulators:
Windows
- Bocht
- DOSEMU
- Plex86
- VMware
- WINE
- Win4Lin
Linux
- Cygwin
- VMware
