Will my computer slow down if I install multiple operating systems?

Many of my friends have said that installing multiple operating systems on a single PC slows down individual OS's because the total RAM gets divided among the OS's.

Is there any truth in the above statement?

Solution 1:

It depends on how you install the multiple operating systems – there are generally two options

• installing for dual boot
• installing using a VM

Dual boot installation just places the other OS on free space on your hard disk, so it will use hard disk space (you may need/be-asked-to to create new partitions), but since in a dual boot only one OS will run at any given time, then no memory or CPU is being used by the other OS.

Virtual machine (VM) is a software program which emulates the hardware of a PC. If you use a VM to install your second OS, then both OS can run at the same time – so you can have a Windows PC which has Linux running in a VM-window, and you can use both at the same time. Since you can use both at the same time, they both will use memory and CPU, and then you may see the computer slowing down.

If you don't know anything about how to use a VM, then it is unlikely that you have one, but rather that you have a dual boot system, in which case – NO, you will not see the system slowing down.

Solution 2:

The OS you are running will not slow down. Only the hard disk capacity will be decreased.

Theoretically your OS may slow down if you have a running program in the background which scans files on hard disk, because this program will scan all files from all operating system. But this is just a theoretical slowdown which you will not notice.

If you plan to have different OSs in your hard disk (Windows, Linux, MacOS), then Windows OS will not see them and will not be slowed down at all.

You may also consider having virtual OSs via VirtualBox. Myself, for example, have more than 10 OSs and 1 main OS. When I need, let's say, Win 7 for design, I start its virtual machine and have one system running inside other system. I have 8 GB of RAM and I give 4GB RAM to each system and the virtual OS is not slow at all. Just to mention that these virtual OSs are not suitable for gaming.