How To Setup Virtual Linux In Windows

Want to run virtual Linux inside your Windows ? There are many advantages using virtual machine. For example it is good for testing and experimenting. If something goes wrong, one can easily just destroy the virtual machine and setup a new one. Your Windows operating system is not touched and is therefore very safe to play around.

This is only tested in Windows 7, probably runs on XP, Vista and 8 also. Download VMware Player here: http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ install it to your computer. In this post we are going to use Xubuntu. So go to Xubuntu home page and download the latest version and also 64 or 32 bit version depending on your machine. You can easily check your Operating system from Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System

Now open VMware Player, click create a new virtual machine button.

In the next screen select Installed disc image from file (iso): and locate your Xubuntu iso file

Insert your name and set password in the next screen.

Then select name for the operating system and folder where it will be installed. 

Now select how much disk space you want to give for your machine. You can also select if you want to store the Linux in one single file or split the files. If you select split disk it should be easier to move the virtual machine on another computer but if you are not going to move it then I would say pick the single file. It offers better performance.

In the last screen select customize hardware if you want to change the default options. If you have a lot of RAM memory for example you should make it bigger, the default is 1 gigabyte but for example I have 12 gigs so I changed my virtual machine to use 4gb of memory and I also have 6 core processor so I gave 2 of the cores to virtual machine. This made the virtual machine run way smoother than with the default options. 

When you are ready to move on, tick the box power on this virtual machine after creation and click finnish. 

Now it should start installing Xubuntu. After installation you can use your virtual Linux machine like it was installed as main operating system. You can power off the virtual machine and continue later, everything is saved to hard disk. It could be said that it's like in the movie Inception, operating system inside operating system. So if you make it full screen it may take while to get used to it.