Run Linux in Windows

kavinele · kavinele Sun Feb 07, 2010 12:11 am

Run Linux in Windows

Many users of Windows XP and Vista will want to try Linux at some
point, often just to see what all the fuss is about. There are many
different Linux distributions and it isn’t convenient for a
non-technical user to set up dual booting alongside an existing Windows
install. Thankfully, there are tools available which mean you can play
with a full Linux install inside the familiar surroundings of Microsoft
Windows.

There are several pieces of software that let you run a virtual PC
within Windows, allowing you to install virtually any operating system
in an emulated PC environment. There are two main solutions available,
firstly the free Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, which is reasonably good and easy to install. The second choice is also a free piece of software and is called VMware Player,
and features several more advanced features. For this article we will
be using the MS Virtual PC virtualisation software as it provides more
flexibility in the free version.

Step 1 - Install the Microsoft Virtual PC Software

This is a very straight forward installation, and the download is
around 30-60MB (depending on components) at the time of this article:

Check Download Links
Code:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/overview.mspx

Step 2 – Locate and download a Linux Distribution

Once Virtual PC is installed, you need to download a Linux distribution. Some popular choices are:

Ubuntu :

Check Download Links
Code:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Fedora :

Check Download Links
Code:

http://fedoraproject.org/

Mandriva :

Check Download Links
Code:

http://www.mandriva.com/

Proceed to the download section of whichever distribution you
choose, and if you are given plenty of options of types to download
then look for a 32bit i386 ISO file.

This article will use Ubunutu, and the download URL at the time was:

Check Download Links
Code:

http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/releases.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso

Once you have found the file, download it to your PC.

Step 3 – Setup a Virtual PC

Load MS Virtual PC 2007 from the start menu and begin the wizard to
create a new virtual machine, the screenshots below illustrate this
process using recommended settings. Click Next to begin the setup
process:

Select “Create a new virtual machine”:

Call this virtual machine whatever you like, for example “Linux” or “Ubuntu”:

Select “Other” from the OS dropdown menu to customise the virtual PC:

Choose how much system RAM you wish to allocate to the virtual PC, if
you can spare it, 512MB would be recommended. It does appear to
allocate the whole amount of memory to the software, even if you are
only using a small portion of it within the Virtual PC. 512MB should be
fine for users with 2GB+ of Ram, but those with 1GB may struggle to run
much else in the background.

Select create “A new virtual hard disk”:

Choose a location to save this virtual drive and assign a size
(dependant on how much disk space you have left). You can make up to 3
virtual hard drives, but if you wanted more drives you can always
partition them to as many drive letters as required.

Click finish to create the Virtual PC:

Step 4 – Install Linux
Select the Virtual PC listed under the name assigned during setup, and then click start:

This
will start to boot up the Virtual PC, although there is no operating
system installed at present. To install Linux, click CD > Capture
ISO Image and then open the saved Linux ISO from Step 2. If you find
that your mouse pointer is stuck within the Virtual PC window, press
right-ALT to release it:

Once
this is done, click Action > Reset to reboot the Virtual PC and
start the Linux Install. During boot, the Linux install will
automatically load and the onscreen installation steps must be
followed. These steps will differ slightly for each Linux distribution,
but it should be a straight forward process. If you use Ubuntu, select
the “Install Ubuntu” option rather than running the Live CD:

This
will start the graphical installer where you can customise your install
options. This article will not cover each installation step, as it will
vary for each install. However, in most cases it is just a case of
filling in basic information and clicking “next” as there is only 1
possible installation drive. Unless you are an advanced user, allow
Linux to automatically partition your virtual drive:

Once
the installation is complete the Virtual PC will restart, at which
point you should unmount the ISO file by clicking CD > Release CD.
Once the restart is complete, you should now be at the Linux login
screen:

Congratulations,
you now have a working Linux install from within Windows! To boot in to
Linux again simply load Virtual PC 2007 from the start menu and double
click on the Linux name (as in the first stage of Step 4).

Run Linux in Windows

Run Linux in Windows

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