Installing Ubuntu inside Windows using Virtual. Box. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share. Alike 3. 0 Unported License. The screenshots in this tutorial use Ubuntu 1. Ubuntu 1. 2. 1. 0, 1. Ubuntu. Actually, you can install pretty much any Linux distribution this way. Introduction. Virtual. Box allows you to run an entire operating system inside another operating system. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike 3. Unported License. Interesting Facts About Universe Pdf'>Interesting Facts About Universe Pdf. The screenshots in this tutorial use Ubuntu 12. How Can You Install Windows Software on Linux Surprisingly, you can install Windows software on Linux. This includes applications and games alike. How To Install Windows Program With Wine' title='How To Install Windows Program With Wine' />Please be aware that you should have a minimum of 5. MB of RAM. 1 GB of RAM or more is recommended. Comparison to Dual Boot. Many websites including the one youre reading have tutorials on setting up dual boots between Windows and Ubuntu. Windows Apps. Zorin OS allows you to install many Windows apps using the builtin Wine runtime. Please note that not all Windows apps may be compatible with Zorin OS. RONA carries supplies for your Install a suspended ceiling projects. Find how to help your home improvement project. Use Wine. Wine is a compatibility layer that allows Windows applications to run on Linux. Its basically an implementation of the Windows API on Linux. Like boxed wine, canned wine is looked down upon by wine snobs, but that shouldnt stop us regular folks from enjoying it. Canned wine is actually a much more. A dual boot allows you, at boot time, to decide which operating system you want to use. Installing Ubuntu on a virtual machine inside of Windows has a lot advantages over a dual boot but also a few disadvantages. Advantages of virtual installation. The size of the installation doesnt have to be predetermined. It can be a dynamically resized virtual hard drive. You do not need to reboot in order to switch between Ubuntu and Windows. The virtual machine will use your Windows internet connection, so you dont have to worry about Ubuntu not detecting your wireless card, if you have one. The virtual machine will set up its own video configuration, so you dont have to worry about installing proprietary graphics drivers to get a reasonable screen resolution. You always have Windows to fall back on in case there are any problems. All you have to do is press the right Control key instead of rebooting your entire computer. For troubleshooting purposes, you can easily take screenshots of any part of Ubuntu including the boot menu or the login screen. Its low commitment. If you later decide you dont like Ubuntu, all you have to do is delete the virtual hard drive and uninstall Virtual. Box. Disadvantages of virtual installation. In order to get any kind of decent performance, you need at least 5. MB of RAM, because you are running an entire operating system Ubuntu inside another entire operating system Windows. The more memory, the better. I would recommend at least 1 GB of RAM. Even though the low commitment factor can seem like an advantage at first, if you later decide you want to switch to Ubuntu and ditch Windows completely, you cannot simply delete your Windows partition. You would have to find some way to migrate out your settings from the virtual machine and then install Ubuntu over Windows outside the virtual machine. Every time you want to use Ubuntu, you have to wait for two boot times the time it takes to boot Windows, and then the time it takes to boot Ubuntu within Windows. Installation Process. The first thing you have to do is obtain Virtual. Box. Visit the Virtual. Box websites download page. Install it the same way you would any normal Windows program. Follow these instructions to get a Ubuntu disk image. After you launch Virtual. Box from the Windows Start menu, click on New to create a new virtual machine. When the New Virtual Machine Wizard appears, click Next. You can call the machine whatever you want. If youre installing Ubuntu, it makes sense to call it Ubuntu, I guess. You should also specify that the operating system is Linux. Virtual. Box will try to guess how much of your memory or RAM to allocate for the virtual machine. If you have 1 GB or less of RAM, I would advise you stick with the recommendation. If, however, you have over 1 GB, about a quarter your RAM or less should be fine. For example, if you have 2 GB of RAM, 5. MB is fine to allocate. If you have 4 GB of RAM, 1 GB is fine to allocate. If you have no idea what RAM is or how much of it you have, just go with the default. Spreadsheet Software For Macbook Pro. If this is your first time using Virtual. Box which it probably is if you need a tutorial on how to use it, then you do want to Create new hard disk and then click Next. Click Next again. Theoretically, a dynamically expanding virtual hard drive is best, because itll take up only what you actually use. I have come upon weird situations, though, when installing new software in a virtualized Ubuntu, in which the virtual hard drive just fills up instead of expanding. So I would actually recommend picking a Fixed size storage. Ubuntus default installation is less than 3 GB. If you plan on adding software or downloading large files in your virtualized Ubuntu, you should tack on some buffer. Click Create and wait for the virtual hard drive to be created. This is actually just a very large file that lives inside of your Windows installation. The next thing to do to make the currently blank virtual hard drive useful is to add the downloaded Ubuntu disk image the. Click on Settings and Storage. Then, under CDDVD Device, next to Empty, youll see a little folder icon. Click that. Select the Ubuntu. Once youve selected it, click OK. Then double click your virtual machine to start it up. You may get a bunch of random warningsinstructions about how to operate the guest operating system within Virtual. Box. Read those, and then you may also want to mark not to see those again. Wait for Ubuntu to boot up. Once its started up, just follow the regular installation procedure as if you were installing Ubuntu on a real hard drive instead of a virtual one. Afterwards, in order to use your virtualized installation instead of continually booting the live CD, double check that the CDDVD Device entry is Empty again. Last updated 1. 02.