[CentOS] Is it possible/advisable to run CentOS 4.4 and 5.0 on the same box

Thu May 17 19:56:13 UTC 2007
Warren Young <warren at etr-usa.com>

Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
> We are in the process of transiting from 4.4 to 5.0 and I may need to
> be able to switch back and forth for a while.  Is it possible (or
> advisable) to run both 4.4 and 5.0 on the same machine, or does that
> involve a lot of reinstalling/repartitioning and a fair amount of pain
> (I have only one disk on the test machine for this purpose).

If it's just for the purpose of supporting software, I'd use some kind 
of virtualization and put 4.x in a VM hosted by 5.x.  The only time you 
need a real machine (instead of a VM) is when you have some hardware 
level requirement.

I use VMware's free VMware Server to keep many Linuxen around, which I 
need so I can build RPMs for each of the many platforms we have in the 
field.  Once you have a VM solution set up, you find that you then 
create still more VMs for testing and so on.  It's liberating.