One of my favourite features of the Raspberry Pi is the availability of lots of different Operating Systems available for the machine. But you can rapidly end up with a large pile of SD cards on your desk for switching between.
If you want something a little slicker and more integrated, both R-Comp and RISCOSbits also ship software which allows you to boot into RISC OS or Linux with the ability to have a shared file area which you can see from both systems. You cannot have both running at the same time, but it is a very easy to reboot into the other system. I would strongly recommend it as part of the purchase of any new system.
RISCOSbits also allow you to purchase their software (called EDOS) as a separate item, and today's task was to have a look at that....
You can buy EDOS in several different variations depending on how you want to use it. You can install the software on your existing SD card or get a pre-configured SD card. This is much the safest/easiest route. If you do install EDOS onto an existing SD card, you should back it up first just incase.
The version I tried came with an SD card and USB drive. Installation was simply a matter of plugging them in and rebooting. You get a standard RISC OS desktop with an option to boot into Linux (which also has an option to boot into RISC OS). The shared filesystem allows you to see files on both systems, but remember not all filetypes will work on the other system.
Overall, dual-booting is a much slicker and more convenient solution and much nicer than a pile of SD cards!
RISCOSbits website
R-Comp website