Addressing the question in the thread title.... Would you expect to be able to run two Operating Systems at the same time on a PC? The answer is the same for a Pi: NO. However, you can run multiple applications (which is what you actually appear to want to do) at the same time, under a single OS, to wit: Linux. And, indeed, you could do so on far less hardware than you are planning to use. I would expect that a 4GB Pi5 could do it with ease and it wouldn't surprise me if a 2GB Pi5 would be enough.
Note that running a virtual machine or a guest OS is NOT the same as running multiple OSes on the same system. No matter how you structure it, there is going to be something--generally an OS--that "owns" the hardware and controls hardware-related services for programs that run under OS control. (The major exception being running "bare metal", in which case, functionally the application program also acts as the degree of OS it needs.)
Note that running a virtual machine or a guest OS is NOT the same as running multiple OSes on the same system. No matter how you structure it, there is going to be something--generally an OS--that "owns" the hardware and controls hardware-related services for programs that run under OS control. (The major exception being running "bare metal", in which case, functionally the application program also acts as the degree of OS it needs.)
Statistics: Posted by W. H. Heydt — Fri Mar 07, 2025 5:29 am