How to use a virtual machine

For some projects it is useful to run a virtual machine, to have more freedom to use administrator features or to use different operating systems than Windows. Additionally, a virtual machine can be transported between physical machines effortlessly. VirtualBox is a program for virtual machine management and manages settings and different virtual machines. Before you start, you should look into which operating system to use in the virtual machine. Most VM users will likely want to use some sort of Linux distribution. Most support for Linux distribution can be found for Ubuntu type distributions, and the author recommends Elementary OS (https://elementary.io/) as it is pretty, userfriendly, free and based on Ubunty so all Ubuntu support will be applicable. Below is a short overview of how to get started with VirtualBox, and an extensive manual can be found here: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html.

To start VirtualBox, press start, type ‘virtualbox’ and click on ‘Oracle VM Virtualbox’. You should see this window, but likely with different machines: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zGpoLG_NHihJeCkAUgjcJN6YdJunCuil/view?usp=sharing

To install a new virtual machine, click ‘New’. You should see this: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JYlXWs8ZGsBF7BUqjiLXCoslDWNz0QER

Fill in the name and select the type and version appropriate to the OS you want to install from the dropdowns. Select the amount of RAM that the virtual machine may use, it is advisable to keep the slider in the green. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TTb3gPmHFqkN58QUmeVdd8ofl4LEG9A0

Select ‘Make a new virtual harddrive’: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cE-18VIaILI54IIPGvXzMJk228aHQcgd

Click next twice and select the harddrive size. A new device should appear in the VirtualBox list, select the device and go to settings. At the storage tab, click on an empty drive. Click the disk icon next to ‘Optical station’ on the right and select the file you downloaded earlier. https://drive.google.com/open?id=19k9GCkXKF6ddRjuzbfepxPJ-EPsuOW_m

Now you can click start on the main VirtualBox screen and start installing your operating system. Install instructions for elementary (and practically all other linux distributions) are explained on-screen. To learn the basics of elementary OS, visit https://elementary.io/docs/learning-the-basics